The Good Rat: A True Story (2008)

I guess I get Jimmy Breslin. It's the diction, the cadence and the shaggy wandering narrative style. But he's so parochial. Aside from someone who is really into Mafia history or who lived in New York during these trials, I doubt many people could stick with this all the way through. Too many characters, too much rambling. Too much reliance on court transcripts without context.

Couldn't help thinking that Mike Royko would have a better feel for a readership beyond his city. Funny thing: this is a story about the end of the Italian mafia, the last of the wise guys, the demise of which was being err celebrated or immortalized with the Sopranos even as Breslin was writing. As he notes, even movies like Godfather were marking the end of an era.

Yet Breslin doesn't pick up on the popular interest to make some compares and contrasts. How do some of the real characters and organizations resemble the fictional ones? You sure don't root for any of these low-lifes that Breslin briefly sketches. There's one oblique remark about Pacino backing out of the making of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight at the same time that Breslin met the young De Niro but that about covers it.

Breslin seems to think that the mafia--organized crime--equals the Italian mafia. But the Chinese mafia has probably been bigger for a long time in the US--in the sense of the number of people being trafficked and the money and drugs flowing through. Gambling, loansharking. As far as global links too. Murder? I don't know. Then of course there must be a lot of Latin American gangs as well.

In short: very New York. ( )

A surprisingly entertaining book considering the topic. Jimmy Breslin has built a story of the Mafia old and current around the court case against two extremely “dirty” cops in the NYPD. Burt Kaplan, working for the Mafia for decades, is the witness; now in his 70s and tired of prison life, he has turned “rat”. Kaplan is, from the book cover in this version “one of the most devastating turncoats of all time”. The court transcripts have a certain fascination which give great insight into the minds of the Mafia. Everything is run like a business, as is fairly well-known, but to hear it in the words of Kaplan, the descriptions of murder, making people disappear, comes across as just a day in the office. He tells everything straight as if describing ordering a meal to be delivered, or shipping a parcel out. Kaplan’s “voice” and Breslin’s style are what make the story so entertaining.

Breslin fills in background between sessions of the transcript with what appears to be the results of interviews through the years. Raised in the same location as the Families, he knew them personally and by reputation. This is what makes the story. He knows what he is talking about and has a wonderful flow between the transcripts and the “normal” lives of the people referred to. He gives us perhaps the most accurate picture of the history from the 1950s to the present of the “families” including their movement from Brooklyn to Staten Island, and on into the final crumbling days of the Dons. I was pleasantly surprised by this book, I thought it would be a lot of blood and guts described in great detail and do not usually read books to do with the Mafia. This book is so unexpected, I’m inclined to read Breslin’s other books on the same topics. I would recommend this book for it’s courtroom interest, it’s historical fact, and it’s entertainment value. Very good. ( )

Incredibly bad. Breslin has page after page of court transcripts. He really mailed this one in. Hard to believe someone thought this was publishable.