Joseph D. Pistone

Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia is one of my favourite books. The bravery and courage of FBI Special Agent Joseph D. Pistone to remain undercover within New York’s Bonnano crime family for six years was nothing short of amazing, especially when I consider that I’d probably shit myself within about six minutes if I was in the same situation.

That’s the great advantage of books; you get to imagine yourself as that character, and as Donnie Brasco I got to whack wiseguys show more (that’s killing gangsters for those of you not in the know) and make my bones (badge of honour for killing, not a sexual reference). The one disadvantage of books is sometimes all your questions have not been answered and you want the story to continue.

So you can imagine how keen I was to get hold of a copy of Pistone’s new memoirs which fill in a few of the gaps and the aftermath of that exciting – yet bloody dangerous – period in his life.

What happened to Donnie’s partner in crime Benjamin “Left Guns” Ruggerio? Did they ever find out who killed Sonny Black and stuffed him in a trunk of a car? What was it like for Pistone to face down the bad guys in court who he had spent the best part of half a decade living amongst? Did Pistone go on to infiltrate the cult who are brainwashing young impressionable minds to buy Justin Bieber records?

To read the rest of this review please check out my Books For Men book review:
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A good book, though it did start dragging about 3/4's of the way through. The descriptions of the different mob jobs that he was involved in got old after a while. Otherwise, an excellent read. Mr. Pistone had incredible courage and fortitude to stick with this assignment for so long.

The term ‘blew me away’ is perhaps used far too often when it comes to book reviews, but I can safely say that this is one book that left me truly astonished and open-mouthed with every page turn.

Special FBI Agent Jospeh. D Pistone spent five years working undercover as a mafia associate in the Bonnano New York crime family. A film was made in 1997 based on his life starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, but like most films based on books, you only get half the story on the big screen.

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Like a lot of mysteries, I finished this because I wanted to know how all the murders shook out in the end, but... it's not that great of a story. It spends all its time on the wrong side of the balance between keeping your reader in the dark and giving away clues, so the denouement comes out of nowhere, and doesn't really adequately explain the action (nor all of the murders). A significant portion of the prose is caught up with Donnie's existential crisis over his undercover work and the show more impact it's had on his identity, and it's sad for him that he doesn't get to see his kid play T-ball and his wife's not really speaking to him, but if he were really relatably regretful about all that, he'd be done being an undercover agent, and he's not. Pistone doesn't do a good job of showing you what's on the other side of that equation that's so much more compelling if you don't feel that way already, and so Donnie's regret seems insincere; his introspection falls really, really flat. The mystery is okay and the writing is okay; it's a fast read and good for killing some time, but it's not a good book. show less