Mafia News

Joseph Serio’s recently released book “Investigating the Russian Mafia” (Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2008) is a detailed accounting of his study and personal experience on “Russian Mafia” related issues. He notes that the term “Russian Mafia” comprises elements of several ethnic groups in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Continue Reading »

Heavily guarded Roberto Saviano is known as the Salman Rushdie of Italy

Heavily guarded Italian mob author Roberto Saviano, 28, poses for a photograph at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 in Toronto. Nathan Denette/National Post

TORONTO -Roberto Saviano, the embattled Italian author of a sensational expose of the calamitous world of the Camorra, the Mafia of Naples, stares with darkly brooding eyes but flashes a mischievous smile when asked what Canada means to the mobsters in his neighbourhood. Continue Reading »

Toby Clements reviews McMafia: Crime without Frontiers by Misha Glenny

The title of this horrifying but gripping book derives not from some criminal variant of the Celtic tiger, but a suggestion that just as McDonald’s fast food outlets have spawned exponentially all over the world since the Nineties, so has the Mafia. Continue Reading »

For followers of crime drama, the word mafia might produce images of unspeakable violent acts and gun battles in the streets of major U.S. cities, reminiscent of scenes from “The Godfather” movies.

However, there is a different mafia functioning quietly yet successfully in the United States, and its operations could possibly be affecting every American either directly or indirectly.

This mafia, driven more by the desire to acquire money rather than territory, is collectively known as the Russian mafia, although those involved are from other post-Soviet countries as well, according to a new book by Joe Serio. Continue Reading »

Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano arrives at a police station in Palermo. Photograph: Reuters

The letters of jailed Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano are full of insights into his leadership style. The result could be a how-to manual for company directors. Clare Longrigg opens the mafiosi’s management handbook Continue Reading »

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It’s an offer you can’t refuse if you’re visiting Italy on holiday this year - a tourist guidebook on the Mafia. The 55-page pocketbook hit the streets this week and they have been flying off the shelves.

Author Augusto Cavadi, 58, says his aim is to explain “everything you ever wanted to know about the Mafia but were afraid to ask.” Continue Reading »

Real-life tragedies stand out in an anthology of Italian writing on the Mob
Mafia and Outlaw Stories - from Italian Life and Literature - translated and edited by Robin Pickering-Iazzi - University of Toronto Press, 180 pages, $24.95

In this absorbing collection of tales about the Mafia in Sicily, most taken from Italian fiction but a significant few from the personal experiences of real people, “life” emerges as the winner over “literature.” Measured in drama and in acts of remarkable bravery, the stories told in their own words by a handful of Sicilian women who dared to resist the Mafia are far more compelling and tragic than anything dreamed up by the novelists and short story writers. Continue Reading »

A BESTSELLING author forced to live under police protection after publishing an exposé of the Naples mafia is expected to run for parliament in a challenge to Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire tycoon and former prime minister.

Roberto Saviano, 28, whose book Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia sold 1m copies in Italy and prompted several death threats, has been asked to join the slate led by Walter Veltroni, leader of the centre-left Democratic party and Berlusconi’s main rival in the general election on April 13-14. Continue Reading »

AUTHOR Joe Pieri’s latest book ‘The Octopus’ puts the spotlight on the Mafia and charts the rise of the rise of the organisation from its days as a way for Sicilian communities to help each other to its reincarnation as an infamous society of organised criminals. Continue Reading »

New Mafia Fiction Thriller - “Sopranos Style”

Just when you think you are safe - all hell breaks loose! That’s what has happened to Frankie Granstino and his fiancée, Alicia.

“Better Off Dead In Paradise” is the new action packed, Mafia thriller novel, and sequel to “Better Off Dead”. “Better Off Dead” told the story of Frankie Granstino, the young life insurance salesman from Brooklyn New York, who got trapped by the Vongemi Mafia Family into writing life insurance policies on people who ended up dying mysteriously. Continue Reading »