Booknote: Gaspipe

Philip Carlo, Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss. Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2008. ISBN: 9781400137114.  

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: true crime, memoir, biography, Mafia
Format: audiobook 
Source: Via Overdrive provided by Madison County (KY) Public Library

I picked this up mostly out of curiosity and because I had learned about Gaspipe Casso from other books about the Mob I had read or documentaries I had seen. It is not a terribly interesting book. Much of the book basically is Gaspipe Casso, as told to the author, romanticizing much of his deeds and time in the Mob. Casso presents the romanticizing of the Mafia as the community mediator. For Italian Americans in NYC, you went to the Mafia rather than the police. You also see this in fictional works like The Godfather. The poor oppressed immigrants often needed the Mafia to help them out to solve problems, and it may have started out that way, but it degenerated into the criminal enterprises that exploited said immigrants and pretty much anyone else.

The author's family lived in same neighborhood the Casso family did. In fact, the families knew each other. However, the author's family  had no mob affiliation. Later, this "going back" helped  him get access to Anthony Casso who chose him to tell the story.

The book has some descriptive moments, such as the torture scene of one of the men that tried to kill him. However, the book also features some pretty hokey lines like someone having a doctorate in torture and Beethoven's 5th Symphony of pain to describe a stage of the torture as Casso let wounds on his victim get some time to swell and fester. The subject matter may be serious, but it is often presented in what can only be described as a cheesy style.

The book also provides some look at the history of the Mob in the U.S. and also looks at the organization in general. For example, it looks at why the Mafia was successful. Large part of it was The Commission, which made sure everyone followed the rules, and for a while, everyone did follow the rules. It was business, and business was doing well. So much so that regular business people wanted to be involved with the Mafia in order to get more wealth and power, and those business people were fascinated by how the Mafia dealt in every business and endeavor from law enforcement to movie making to rackets, etc. Many were happy to give the Mafia information and intelligence to keep the business going. To be honest, I found the history digressions more interesting than Casso's life story.

At the end of the book, the appendix questions the whole process of the justice system using mob members turned informant or collaborator, rats as they are often labeled, to secure convictions. More often than not the government does not keep their word in agreements, even when the collaborator did everything that was asked. While these criminals are not to be pitied, the government in some ways using its power to break its word for the sake of appearance, expediency, and convenience (to them) does not exactly make the government look any better and if anything they come across as just as bad as the Mafia when using the philosophy both Mob and government often share: the ends justify the means.


Overall, this is a pretty forgettable book. If are really interested in Anthony Casso's life, this may be a book to pick up although there are other more interesting sources that go over  his life in the Mafia and the Lucchese Crime Family. Borrow this one if you must.

2 out of 5 stars.