Product Description

He was the first to put the mafia on the page exactly as they were - before "The Sopranos", before "The Godfather", there was Jimmy Breslin of the "New York Herald Tribune". As Breslin says, 'I hate legitimate people. They all proclaim immaculate honesty, but each day they commit the most serious of all felonies, being a bore. To whom do you care to listen, Warren Buffet, the second richest and most boring person on earth, or Burt Kaplan out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn?' Breslin can sniff out a story like he can sniff out a rat.Characters like the Honorable Jack Weinstein, the judicial heavyweight who snapped Vincent Gigante's insanity defense in two, Sammy the Bull, the original snitch, Gaspipe Casso, named for his weapon of choice; and hangouts like Pep McGuire's, the legendary watering hole where reporters and gangsters (all hailing from the same working class neighbourhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories, the dog-fight circles and body dumps at Ozone Park, the back room at Midnight Rose's candy store where Murder, Inc. hired and fired.But best of all, Breslin captures the moments in which the Mafia was made and broken - Breslin was there the night John Gotti celebrated his acquittal at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry, having bribed his way to innocence, only to incite the wrath of the FBI, who would later crush Gotti and others with the full force of the RICO laws. Woven throughout Breslin's stories is the aforementioned 'Burt Kaplan out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,' and star witness in the recent trial of the two New York City detectives indicted for acting as mob hit men in eight homicides. Kaplan was a former handler for the Luchese crime family who owed the law 18 years in the penitentiary, and, like all rats, he knew when to flee a sinking ship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463529 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Breslin, renowned journalist and author of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, revisits a familiar wise-guy milieu in this collection of stories and anecdotes about the mob. His writing, like the Mafia itself, breezily transitions from humorous to horrifying as he regales the reader with loosely connected tales of mistaken identity, crooked cops, snitches and murder. Unlike the Sopranos and the many other touchstones of the American love affair with organized crime, for Breslin, there's good and there's evil, with little in between. As always, however, nicknames are half the fun, as Sammy The Bull Gravano, Tony Café and Gaspipe Casso take the stage in the Mafia hotspots of the five boroughs, including Greenpoint, in Brooklyn, and Ozone Park, in Queens, as Breslin delights with stories from the Mafia's heyday. Breslin's storytelling is set to the sweet background music of one of the mob's biggest canaries, Burton Kaplan, as he sings to a grand jury. The author's vernacular precision contrasts sharply with the plodding sterility of Kaplan's grand jury testimony, and as we find out, good guys can often tell ugly stories more authentically than the bad guys. The effect is tragicomic as Kaplan's testimony sounds the death knell for his associates. These stories unveil the strict code of conduct, often broken, of a dying breed. According to Kaplan, however, while illegal gambling and extortion may be waning industries, the myth of the American Mafia will never die. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Richard Davidson has just the gravelly tough-guy voice to bring Breslin's Mafia story to life. But THE GOOD RAT is an unnecessarily complicated story about a good fella named Burt Kaplan who testifies against two NYPD detectives who murdered for the Mob. For authenticity's sake, Breslin has included actual testimony from the trial--which, unfortunately, slows down the pace of the story. The plot also suffers from too much jumping around. Breslin is at his best when he tells a story strictly in his own words and delivers the flamboyant language and colorful characters he's known for--like Tommy "Three-Finger" Brown and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. M.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
“Breslin chronicles the cops’ sordid tales with a mixture of awe, repugnance and perfect diabolical detail. He remains a master at transforming crookery into opera.” (New York Times Book Review )

“[The Good Rat] is Jimmy Breslin at his best.” (New York Times )

“The ineffable Breslin, the mob’s Homer, may not have done much to ensure Kaplan’s longevity, but he has surely granted him immortality.” (Boston Globe )

“Smart and stinging—Breslin in fine form, which means a winner.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“[Breslin’s] writing, like the Mafia itself, breezily transitions from humorous to horrifying.” (Publishers Weekly )

“A great look at the ugly and anything-but-glamorous truth of organized crime. This is Breslin at his Runyonesque best.” (Rocky Mountain News )

“Bad cops, good crook, great story.” (USA Today )

“Completely sure of what he’s doing, the author knows how to hook a reader.” (New York Observer )

“Jimmy Breslin still hits the high notes...entertaining, insightful and 100% Grade-A Breslin.” (T.J. English, author of Paddy Whacked and The Westies )

“Breslin returns to us from brain surgery intact, writing the way he writes, which is very good stuff indeed.” (Pete Dexter, National Book Award-winning author of Paris Trout and Paper Trails )

“The Good Rat tells us about the corkscrew workings of the criminal mind where Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment left off.” (Nicholas Pileggi, New York Times bestselling author of Wiseguy )

“Breslin put his notes to brilliant use in a colorfully nuanced depiction of Burt Kaplan. Kaplan is The Good Rat, and while Breslin doesn’t put a gloss on his crimes, he uses him wisely and well to tell us once again about New York’s underbelly. And, in such memorable terms.” (New York Daily News )

“Breslin is a writer of the heart. It’s hard to name another author who demonstrates a better understanding of the passions of urban misrule.” (Playboy )