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THE GOOD GUYS
by Bill Bonanno and Joe Pistone with David Fisher
Time Warner, January 2005
360 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0446529656


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In the 1980s FBI agents Laura Russo and Connor O'Brien are partners on Mafia watching duty. This is pretty boring stuff, they spend their days in an old apartment building in NYC across the street from one of the Mafia's 'social clubs' listening in on the tapped conversations. Of course the 'wise guys', not being dumb, know they are being bugged and turn up the radio or run water when they talk.

However, one bit of information that comes across is the name of Columbia University Professor Peter Gradinsky. The prof is a Russian language instructor and the feds wonder why the Mafia guys are suddenly looking for a missing professor. Now the feds are looking for Gradinsky as well, suspecting that his work as a translator for the mob does not bode well for law and order in the community.

There are a lot of characters in this book -­ with a capital C as well as with a small c ­- most of them with nicknames such as Two Gun, Little Eddie and Blue Eyes. The wise guys obviously love their nicknames. As the hunt for the professor and other various and sundry things progress, the feds find themselves able to manipulate one of the mob guys with interesting repercussions.

Two of the authors, Bill Bonnano, who is a former member of the crime family of the same name, and Joe Pistone, a former undercover FBI agent, alternate writing the chapters. That makes for a somewhat uneven tone to the book and always pulled me out of the story. First the reader is reading what the feds are up to then suddenly it's the mob's turn to narrate. I found that to be very distracting. David Fisher must have had the job of trying to pull all of this together.

If a person likes to read about the mob and the doings of 'wise guys' and also about the FBI, this would probably be a good book. I found it to be slow-moving and only marginally interesting.

Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, January 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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