Gangbusters: The Destruction Of America's Last Great Mafia Dynasty

by Ernest Volkman

The American Mafia is legendary for its ability to survive and flourish in the face of all attempts to stamp it out. But when New York's Lucchese Family, the most successful and powerful group of organized criminals in American history, loses a long battle with its law enforcement adversaries, it signals the end of a notorious era.Gangbusters is the story of how a colorful coterie of FBI agents, prosecutors, and police detectives overcame the early years of bureaucratic inertia, high-level political corruption, and interagency rivalry to destroy the last great Mafia dynasty. In a decade of hand-to-hand combat, they brought down the men long considered untouchable--Tommy Three Fingers, Tony Ducks, Christy Ticks, Tom Mix, Gas Pipe, and the Terminator--and an organization that had its fingers deep into trucking sanitation and the garment industry in New York City.

Based on interviews with antagonists on both sides of the law, courts records, transcripts, and police intelligence files, the book tells the history of a criminal enterprise from the inside--from the men who made it flourish to the men who eventually brought it down.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime

332 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Ernest Wyman Volkman was an American author, investigative reporter, and journalist who wrote about war, espionage, and the criminal underworld. Volkman was a 1959 graduate of Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington, New York, and attended Hofstra University.
A U.S. Army veteran, Volkman was also a military intelligence specialist and wrote many books on the subjects of spies and spying.

Reviews

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volkman has received a lot of criticism for this book. Some internet sites offer the annual Volkman Award for sloppy journalism in the organized crime genre. Personally, I think this is undeserved. This book was entertaining. It does contain some factual errors; but this is a cursory examination of the Lucchese Family - the only such book on the market. It would have been better if he checked his facts; but a great deal of the book is accurate and entertaining for lay audiences.

[Robbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

How much is this book is factual and how much is based on anecdotal hearsay or urban myth? It’s hard to tell.

Wouldn’t read again. Overall not terrible, but there are a lot of names in this book and ‘characters’ which can be slightly confusing as some names are only mentioned once or twice whereas others are referenced multiple times throughout making it difficult to follow who’s ‘whacking’ who.

I enjoyed the early parts of the novel pertaining to the beginning of the Mafia & it’s Sicilian roots more than I did the latter stages involving the Mafia in the 90s.

Also I’m dubious to the sums of money it’s reported that the Mafia members were making. There are no references in this novel, did Ernest Volkman pluck these figures out of thin air?

This book I will donate to a charity shop now I’ve read it.

[Ice · Rating 5 out of 5]

After coauthoring an Edgar-nominated bio of John Gotti (Goombata, 1990) and an account of the $8-million 1978 Lufthansa robbery that provided grist for the film Goodfellas (The Heist, 1986), among other books, Volkman has now written an exciting, intelligent and detailed study of the most successful law-enforcement assault on organized crime in U.S. history. Of the five rival Mafia clans vying for control of New YorkAthe Lucchese, Bonnano, Colombo, Genovese and Gambino familiesAthe Luccheses were the richest and best organized of the lot. Yet by 1995, high-ranking capos were reduced to shaking down deadbeats for pocket money. Volkman charts the family's meteoric rise in lively detail, capitalizing on colorful gangland anecdotes without losing sight of the murderous brutality and crushing stupidity that accelerated their descent. He identifies as the main causes of their decline the Narcotics Control Act of 1955, the reorganization of the FBI following the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 and, most tellingly, the "reverse natural selection" that seemed to breed dumber and dumber Dons, and explains their respective impacts. The Mafia history is balanced with profiles of the dedicated police detectives, FBI agents and U.S. attorneys who pioneered and perfected the tactics that brought the Lucchese family to its knees. Well-paced, evenhanded and insightful, this look into a derelict empire's rise and fall is excellent both as a case study and as an introduction to organized crime.

Volkman (Espionage, LJ 11/1/95) tells the story of the rise and decline of the American Mafia, specifically of the long-powerful Lucchese crime family of New York. He traces the Lucchese organization from its beginnings in New York's East Harlem just after World War I to its sorry state in the mid-1990s. The passage of Prohibition was a growth opportunity the Lucchese family saw and grabbed. They were further helped by the refusal of J. Edgar Hoover to recognize "organized crime families" as a reality. The FBI instead spent the late 1940s and 1950s fighting "Cold War" enemies as the Mafia grew powerful. In the early 1960s, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy forced Hoover to recognize and target the Mafia. Ammunition was provided by the Civil RICO act, which made organized crime a federal offense. Ultimately, the Lucchese family suffered an assault by the FBI, Organized Crime Task Forces, RICO, informants, and its own inability to produce new leaders. Well researched if not scholarly, this popular account has all the appeal of Mario Puzo's The Last Don. A colorful description of a colorful aspect of American crime; highly recommended.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a in-depth insight of the creation all the way thru dismantling of the American Mafia, how they came to be, from the Mother-land & American enterprise, to the "rats" & beaurocracy that took AMerican La Cosa Nostra apart, brick by brick. There is terrific insights as to the historical facts as well as the unknown wiseguy moves(i.e. # of "whacks/bodies") that helped bring us the real life Donnie Brasco & Goodfellas, Casino & Hoffa situations...hey anybody know who really killed JFK??