Booknote: Family Affair

Sam Giancana and Scott M. Burnstein, Family Affair: Greed, Treachery, and Betrayal in the Chicago Mafia. New York: Berkley Books, 2010.  ISBN: 978-0425-22831-9.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: true crime, Mafia, Chicago
Format: paperback
Source: Berea branch of the Madison County (KY) Public Library

This book is a collection of stories about the Chicago Mafia, also known as The Outfit. The stories in the book take us from 1986, when the Spilotro brothers were murdered, to the first decade of the 2000s, when Operation Family Secrets closed and led to major convictions of key Chicago Outfit members. The operation was a success largely due to a made man of The Outfit, Nicholas "Nicky Breeze" Calabrese, who turned government witness.

Some readers may know of Tony Spilotro from the film Casino (in the movie, it Joe Pesci's character). Little did the Mafia know his murder would set off a chain of events leading to serious damage to the mob decades later. The book itself is interesting albeit inconsistent. Some stories are more interesting than others. Other stories are just minutiae that adds little to the overall story and feel like filler. Also, this is not a chronological history of the Chicago Outfit. It is more a collection of connected stories that mostly, but not always, follow a sequence.

If you are interested in the topic of the Chicago mob, this book can provide a start. However, you may want to seek out other books to learn more. Overall, I liked it, but it was no big deal.

3 out of 5 stars.