Title: Blood oath
First published: 1995
Description: The autobiography of George Fresolone,  a gangster involved in gambling rackets and extortion, who became a cooperating witness. Fresolone grew up in the 50s and 60s in the Down Neck section of Newark, N.J., then a neighborhood of hard working, generally  law abiding Italian Americans, but with a  powerful and murderous criminal element just behind the scenes. His father, an illegal bookmaker, died when George was small, and one of the neighborhood gangsters Pasquale "Patty" Martirano (a made member of the Angelo Bruno crime family of Philadelphia) becomes a father figure to young George. Growing up in the shadow of the neighborhood racketeers George grows up to be one of them, illegally taking horse and sports bets and running illegal high stakes card games. During a stay in New Jersey's infamous Rahway prison, a notorious hellhole of violence and assault, George learns that the guys in his crew are not providing the financial support to his wife and children as they promised, causing his disillusionment with the crime family. Not long after his release from prison George is arrested again and is looking at a much longer prison term. His mentor and friend Patty is on the run from the law and dying from cancer. His loyalty to the crime family broken, Fresolone becomes an informant. George begins taping his fellow criminals, including his own induction ceremony into the crime family.   Fresolone has to live with the knowledge that if his fellow gangsters discover the recorder, they won't hesitate to kill him. To make matters worse Fresolone has a powerful rival within his crime family making trouble for him which  seems to be rapidly coming down to a kill or be killed situation. Exciting reading!
Subjects: Mob, Mafia, rackets, crime, Cosa Nostra, Bruno-Scarfo crime family
Places: Down Neck, Newark, New Jersey, North Jersey, Philadelphia, Atlantic City
People: George Fresolone, Nicky Scarfo
Time periods: 1970s to 1990