Review: Fascinating Subject; Extensive Research; Sloppy Writing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 5, 2014
Joe Bruno's "Murder and Mayhem in the Big Apple" is a painstakingly researched look at some of the more interesting facets of organized crime in New York City. Unfortunately, sloppy writing, poor organization, and some annoying stylistic choices make the book much tougher reading than it should be.Bruno focuses on three subjects: the Black Hand, a group of extortionists who flourished around the turn of the 20th century; a turf war between two mob factions for control over a portion of Brooklyn in the early 1930s; and Murder, Inc., a well-organized group of hit men always available to do a mob boss's bidding in the 1930s. Obviously, it would be impossible to cover even one of those subjects comprehensively in this slim volume's 80 pages, so, for the most part, Bruno covers each by means of a series of anecdotes of actual events, usually various mob killings or arrests, loosely tied together to form a mostly chronological narrative.Bruno's skills as a researcher are apparent here as he has brought up some names that I had never heard of and described what happened to them (usually something bad). The various killings that are portrayed rarely go smoothly (especially the murder of a New York policeman who foolishly visited Italy in the early 1900s and ignored all the warnings for his own safety), proving that truth is stranger than fiction. Some of these stories are fascinating.Unfortunately, after a while, a lot of the stories run together, and one mob hit of a third rate gangster winds up sounding a lot like the next. Bruno only does a sketchy job of tying the individual tales into his major story lines such as the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. We wind up with a rough idea of what went on, but some better organization and background description would have made things much clearer.In addition, Bruno uses a number of ill-advised stylistic conventions. The book contains a number of obviously fictionalized conversations between mobsters who discuss plot points that could more easily have been described as straight narration. Instead, we get invented dialogue that sounds like outtakes from a bad episode of "The Untouchables." We also get a lot of slang: people get "whacked" a lot; one gangster winds up "mostly likely downstairs, where there is plenty of fire and no air-conditioning," and for a while, "all was going fine and dandy" for the Mob.My guess is that Bruno, a former newspaperman, was trying to emulate Damon Runyan's style in describing the various gangsters and events in this book. If that's so, Bruno is no Runyan, and his attempts at telling various events in street slang distract from the story rather than make it more breezy and entertaining, which was undoubtedly his intention.I learned a number of things in this book and did get somewhat of a better feel about a few mobsters like Dutch Schultz and Lepke Buchalter. However, instead of being a compelling read, as the best mob stories are, "Murder and Mayhem" is a bit of a chore to get through, even at 80 pages. I'd rate this book at 2 1/2 stars, which I round up to 3 because of the inherently interesting subject matter and Bruno's exhaustive research.