Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI, and a Story of Betrayal
Starred Review. Stressing the elements of irony and malice, Harmon (coauthor,Elvis and Me) sidesteps the usual Mob yarn to tell the somber, dark story of a coldhearted Mafia chieftain and his obedient son, who takes the fall for his father out of familial love and respect. Wily mob head Gregory Scarpa Sr., with a 50-man crew in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, scammed, stole and killed under FBI protection starting in the 1960s, informing against hundreds of gangsters and crooked lawyers for decades. But when faced with arrest for his crimes, the elder Scarpa betrays his adoring son, Gregory Jr., whom he'd groomed to take his place. Convicted for racketeering, the young Scarpa does a long stretch in a federal maximum security prison, where in 1998 he overhears terrorist schemes to attack America from a prisoner named Ramzi Yousef. But his words are discounted until the September 11 attacks. Harmon, a very capable writer, gets inside the heads of the diabolical father and the submissive son (who is still in prison) in this sinister tale of bullets and betrayal. A disturbing, jagged true-crime thriller worthy of prime Hammett, Chandler or Puzo.(May)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.