SOUTH END SYNDICATE

A former Mafia boss tells his story.

The reflections of Arillotta, former boss of a New England faction of the New York City Genovese crime family, make an entertaining contribution to the venerable genre of Mafia memoirs. Arillotta tells his story to former Massachusetts police officer turned novelist and screenwriter Bradley. Following the usual pattern, he recounts his youthful crime apprenticeship in Springfield, Massachusetts, followed by ritual induction into the Mafia family. Readers familiar with complex portrayals of organized crime (à la The Sopranos) should adjust their expectations here. Considerably less affluent and now retired after a tedious prison term, Arillotta traces a career in which the nuts-and-bolts details of protection rackets, drug dealing, robbery, gambling, and extortion take second place to cheating, murder, deceit, and brutal fights between fellow Mafiosi, many of whom turn out to be government informants. Readers will discover that job security for career mobsters has deteriorated since the “golden age” of their lore. Arillotta himself suggests that the problem lies in drug dealing, once forbidden by traditional dons but now a source of immense profits. The downside is that prison sentences for carrying out historic Cosa Nostra business are tolerable, but those for trafficking narcotics can be very severe. “Drug dealers could not be trusted to keep their mouths shut when looking at doing hard time.” It was murder, not drug dealing, that finally tripped Arillotta up, but informants made a critical contribution. Faced with life in prison, he took the same road and turned government informant.

Colorful if unedifying.