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This volume represents the first attempt to systematically compare organised crime concepts, as well as historical and contemporary patterns and control policies in thirteen European countries. These include seven ‘old’ EU Member States, two ‘new’ members, a candidate country, and three non-EU countries. Based on a standardised research protocol, thirty-three experts from different legal and social disciplines provide insight through detailed country reports. On this basis, the editors compare organised crime patterns and policies in Europe and assess EU initiatives against organised crime.

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Organized crime is now a major threat to all industrial and non-industrial countries. Using an inter-disciplinary and comparative approach this book examines the nature of this threat. By analysing the existing, official institutional discourse on organized crime it examines whether or not it has an impact on perceptions of the threat and on the reality of organized crime.

The book first part of the book explores both the paradigm and the rationale of policy output in the fight against organized crime, and also exposes the often ‘hidden’ internal assumptions embedded in policy making. The second part examines the perceptions of organized crime as expressed by various actors, for example, the general public in the Balkans and in Japan, the criminal justice system in USA and circles within the international scientific community. Finally, the third part provides an overall investigation into the realities of organized crime with chapters that survey its empirical manifestations in various parts of the world.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, criminology, security studies and practitioners.

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You may never again think of Canadians as law-abiding

Respected crime reporters Peter Edwards and Michel Auger have pooled their research and expertise to create The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime. Sometimes grim, sometimes amusing, and always entertaining, this book is filled with 300 entries and more than 150 illustrations, covering centuries of organized crime. From pirates such as “Black Bart,” who sheltered in isolated Newfoundland coves to strike at the shipping lanes between Europe and the North American colonies, all the way to the most recent influx of Russianmobsters, who arrived after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and are now honing their sophisticated technological skills on the Western public, Edwards and Auger enumerate the personalities and the crimes that have kept Canadian law enforcement busy. Here too are the Sicilian and Calabrian gangs, the American and Colombian drug connections, the bikers whose internal struggles have left innocent bystanders dead (and who tried to murder Auger), as well as many unexpected figures, such as the Sundance Kid, who spent years in Canada.

Arranged in alphabetical entries for easy browsing, and illustratedthroughout with photographs and drawings, this is a book that will both entertain and inform. ... Read more

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A shocking, true account of a global crime network of unimaginable proportions, in which multinational criminals make alliances much like legitimate businesses, The Merger lays bare the criminal fraternity's new world order. International crime expert and best-selling author Jeffrey Robinson gives details of their subterranean activities-previously known only to international law enforcement insiders-to make this network public, tracing an intricate web of connections between such infamous organized crime rings as the Sicilian Mafiosi, the Camorra from Naples, the Ndrangheta from Calabria, the Chinese Triads, the Russian, Hungarian, and Czech Republic "maffiyas," and organized crime groups from Columbia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Vietnam-to name just a few.

Through his meticulous research, Jeffrey Robinson developed contacts in police organizations all over the world and has pinpointed the factors that have led to the emergence of these worldwide crime cartels. Written with a keen sense of anecdote and an authoritative command of the facts, The Merger is a tautly-paced tale that both educates and entertains.

"Robinson is highly readable and entertaining...[he] will leave readers wondering just what we can do about the situation, which is what he intends all along." (Robert D. Paar, The Boston Globe)

"The Merger crushes all crime novels before because it's written with unflinching truth and conviction." (Vibe Magazine)Amazon.com Review
When telecommunications companies merge, the news isimmediately analyzed by the media and government agencies. Owners ofthe companies' stock immediately vote on the wisdom of the move bybuying or selling. But when criminal organizations merge and maketheir operations global, it takes years for law enforcement to figureout what happened, who was involved, and what the implicationsare. Ever since Italian-American mobster Lucky Luciano linked Mafiafamilies in Sicily and the U.S., crime cartels have been finding waysto expand their operations across national borders, making thosecountries' policemen play an extended game of catch-up. JeffreyRobinson is an authority on international crime, especially moneylaundering, and his book The Merger sometimes reads like acrime novel. It seems strange to imagine that Mexican drug traffickerswould be working closely with Thai postal workers; that a billiondollars a month in drug money would be laundered from Russian gangsthrough Greek Cypriots and then moved on to respectable financialcenters such as London and New York; that Colombian drug cartels wouldget kerosene--an important ingredient for making cocaine--fromTurkmenistan by way of Argentina; that Eastern European criminalswould claim to be Jewish so they could get Israeli passports andlaunder money in the Holy Land. And that's just for-profitcriminality--politically and religiously motivated crime has long beeninternational and is rapidly branching out into cyberterrorism.

Robinson concludes with a note that international drug trafficking isgrowing so fast it now represents 2 percent of the world'seconomy. However, while criminal organizations think globally,Robinson writes, most law enforcement is set up to actlocally. Nations can't decide how to deal with the problem becausenone wants to be the first to sacrifice national sovereignty for thegreater purpose of slowing crime. If this book doesn't keep you up atnight, or at least raise some serious goose flesh, you're made ofpretty stern stuff. --Lou Schuler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Grab-bag of crime stories lacks focus
An unstructured sampler of crime anecdotes does not add up to a well-developed book-length thesis.

I bought this book partly due to the reviews here on Amazon, but I was a bit disappointed. By the time I'd got halfway through, it was clear that Robinson has presented the idea of a "merger" of transnational organized crime as a catch-all category for his large supply of stories about gangsters operating in various countries.

Robinson presents many short anecdotes, laced with speculative connections to fill in the many gaps in the record of known fact. Moving from country to country, he gives thumbnail accounts of the careers of various criminals, from their obscure origins to their final capture by the beleaguered law-enforcement agencies around the world. I found the stories too short to get a good feel for each of the players, and so it became a blizzard of names for me.

What this book is not is a systematic account of the rise of transnational crime and how it operates. Rather, it sketches many different criminal operations and careers and leaves the reader to surmise how they add up to a transnational crime "system." Preoccupied with details and specifics, Robinson does not really help the reader by drawing principles and themes from the material.

I also found that Robinson's sarcastic writing style detracted from the authority of the book.

Robinson clearly has a large database of crime knowledge, and many contacts in the law-enforcement world. But he is a "short snippet" kind of writer, and the book, for me, did not feel like a single unified whole.

A complex subject presented with the drama of a novel
An outstanding look at modern international crime. Robinson has all the details and facts but puts them together in a compelling fashion that makes this book as much a page-turner as any crime novel. He has a knack for taking a complex subject and making it very clear without dumbing it down. I highly recommend this book, especially if you want to know why the "war on drugs" is failing miserably.

good insights into the mire
The Cali cartel, whose profits dwarf those of America's largest companies, have a simple mode of operating. All potential partners fill in a simple form listing the names and addresses of all their living relatives so these urbane men know whom to knock off, if they are double-crossed.

Not that the Colombian cocaine cartels are the world's only baddies. The Mohawk Warriors smuggle $1 bn worth of contraband across the American Canadian frontier every year. And, in today's age of globalized mergers, they work with all comers, from the Cali cartel and Chinese snakeheads to the Russian gangsters, who dominate this book.

Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin is quoted as saying that "Russia is the biggest Mafia state in the world". It is certainly the most dangerous. Although Moscow, from 1991 to 1999, has witnessed thousands of contract killings, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for any of them.

And these gangsters are headed our way in big numbers. And these Russians have some interesting friends. Marc Rich, recently pardoned by Bill Clinton, is mentioned in the book, for doing deals with the Russians and trading in conflict diamonds with the Liberians. Robinson claims that Grigory Loutchansky also donated to Clinton's coffers; he is allegedly the world's most important dealer in black-market nuclear materials. He was considered important enough to be the subject of a 1995 eleven-nation, two-day conference hosted by Interpol. Sergei Mikhailov, who has accumulated a staggering array of passports, including a diplomatic passport for Costa Rica, is probably worth another conference.

So too is the damage these people cause at all levels of society. As well as shaking down American based Russian hockey and basketball players, peddling guns, girls and gambling and putting contracts out on over zealous FBI agents, Robinson contends that Russia's gangsters are also undermining sovereign nations like Israel.

Israel's Law of Return has allowed thousands of Russian gangsters, both Jewish and non Jewish, to establish themselves in Israel. Because Israel does not extradite its citizens, it is a perfect hiding hole for these ruthless racketeers, who have a staggering war chest of $4 billion to buy political influence there.

If Robinson is to believed, the Russian mafia more or less control both the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. They also seem to be well entrenched in London, New York, Geneva, Vienna and the world's other major financial centers. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, struggle to catch even the small fry.

Other countries, the Caribbean ones in particular, long ago sold their souls to the international criminals, who use them to launder their billions. Still, even Dutch controlled Aruba, the world's first mafia state, never went quite as far as the Seychelles, which offered internationally recognized diplomatic passports, plus guaranteed immunity on the island from any form of extradition requested by any other nation, for a mere $10 million. There were plenty of takers, until the tiny nation was forced to withdraw its generous offer of diplomatic immunity to the world's most ruthless criminals.

Not that the Seychelles matter much. The Russian criminal gangs, the Colombians, the Mohawks and the rest of them are uniting in their drive to maximize their global profits no matter what the social cost. And, in today's globalized age, the West contributes to their excesses by buying their contraband, renting out their sex slaves and gambling in their shady casinos. And all their ill-gotten profits are used to traffic more human cargo and move more tons of heroin across our porous borders.

And then there are the nuclear bomb peddlers, another legacy of the Soviet Union's collapse. There is, as Robinson tells us, enough unaccounted-for fissile material that once belonged to the Soviet armed forces to turn Europe and the United States into a moonscape. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and similar people have shown that there is a demand for this material.

Until we can dampen that demand, we must be prepared to live with the dismal consequences these suppliers of human misery beget. Not, by any stretch, a pleasant thought, but a realistic one nonetheless.

Biased, outdated, inaccurate, and full of grammatical errors
This book is a big disappointment. Buy this book and you will regret it. First, the writer is biased. Second, the book is outdated. Third, there are MANY things that are inaccurate (short of fiction). Also the book is full of grammatical errors.

[...] Whatever privileges they enjoy, they EARNED them through decades of suffering.

Comprehensive Review of Organized Crime
`The Merger' is the most comprehensive book on international crime.

The theme is how various gangs and mafias from different nations are cooperating versus competing. This game of cooperation enables each criminal organization to focus on a core competency to increase efficiency. These gangs are no longer disorganized but operate in ways similar to corporations, and are often more knowledgeable & advanced than the 'good guys'.

The other main focus of this book is how these same organizations are using the limitations of police jurisdiction to their advantage.

One way they utilize jurisdiction to their advantage is by meeting in one country, such as Vienna, Austria. There the Russians, Sicilians, Italians, and other gangs stage conferences discussing expansion. They intentionally commit no crime in Austria. Since no crime is committed the police cannot arrest them. They go there as businessmen and behave themselves.

Other means of using jurisdictions to their advantage is to facilitate money laundering. They register multiple shell companies in countries with strict banking privacy laws such as Panama & the Cayman Islands.

They also use Indian reservations to move drugs, contraband alcohol & cigarettes amongst other things. These Indian reservations are constantly seeking more territory supposedly to protect their land, when in truth it usually involves a while man pulling strings as to gain more territory to smuggle drugs. They then wash the proceeds through casinos, and finally launder the money in some offshore banks.

Russians extorting other Russians, Nigerians scamming Europeans & North Americans, it's all covered in this book. Learn about how one organization attempted to buy an old military submarine to smuggle drugs into the USA, meanwhile they were doing this while under surveillance.

This is very well researched & is probably the best book on the market in its category. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

The best on how Capone was really brought down.
No, you won't find any fluffy misleading writing in here. You can purchase the new and less than stellar Johnny come lately Capone book for that. Mr. Hoffman is what you can call a real expert with no qualms. He has done his research, and you can tell that he cared enough to go over his research to deliver a time standing work on his subject. This book is tops on how and who really brought down Al Capone. Chicago's businessmen realized that action had to be taken, and with the finanical help of Chicago's Secret Six, they set the wheels in motion against big Al and his ilk. This, especially after the infamous St. Valentine's day massacre had given the city of Chicago a serious black eye that was seen around the world. Business was hurting. Tourists stayed away because of the daily headlines read. Gangsters were rampant and killing each other mercilessly for ultimate control of the lucreative booze trade.
Learn how Capone was brought down and how a forensic ballistics expert was funded by the businessmen to try and solve the massacre case.

This book helped me on the right track with my research and is highly recommended for the true crime scholar or the novice history buff.
Either way you won't go wrong. It's a great addition to your shelf of accurate books.

Mario Gomes
Founder of myalcaponemuseum

Eliot Who???
No, it wasn't Eliot Ness and his "Untouchables" who brought down Al Capone. It was Internal Revenue agents led by Elmer Irey and Frank Wilson and aided and abbetted by the Chicago Crime Commission and its vigilante arm, the "Secret Six." Professor Hoffman presents us here with a well-documented, and highly readable account of the victory of Uncle Sam and Chicago over America's first major crime lord. Forget The Untouchables. This is the truth. ... Read more

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Morris "Moe" Dalitz was America's most secretive and most successful mobster. As a major architect of the United States' national crime syndicate, Dalitz was active in various fields of organized crime from 1918 until his death, all while spinning a web of myth and mock-respectability around himself so dense that decades after his demise, most mistake the legend for reality. From Prohibition-era bootlegging to the Reagan years, no other individual was present at so many pivotal events in gangland history. It's impossible to fully understand the modern Mob without knowing about Dalitz, his career, and the cunning publicity campaign that transformed his image from thug to that of a revered philanthropist. This exhaustive biography tells the story of Dalitz's life and the syndicate that he and like-minded individuals built from scratch. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz
Although I would be very interested in reading this book, I will not buy it as I feel it is over-priced for a paperback edition.
In my opinion, for the $40.00 price, you should at least get a hardback edition.
I think even the late Moe Dalitz would probably agree that he is being overpriced. But, if the book sell well at that price then the publisher made the right decision.

Mr. Mob: The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz
I just finished this book, and I found it fascinating. The research is extensive--and well-documented. I don't understand the previous reviewer's vague comment about a mistake between pages 1-38. It's American and European history! Maybe if he had spelled it out, it might make more sense, but he seemed to be too busy complaining about the lousy binding. He should have called the publisher and got a new copy.

As far as I can tell, this is the only book completely about Moe Dalitz. There are bits and pieces about Dalitz in various books about the early days of the Mob, as well as ones on the building of Las Vegas. I thought the author did a thorough job of chronicling Dalitz's life and his pivotal role in Mob history. The reader is left to draw his own conclusions about how much influence Dalitz had--which I found was A LOT. If you're interested in the early days of the Mob and Vegas, this is the book for you.

Mr. Mob: the Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz
I received this very expensive paperback book very quickly after placing the order. I got as far as page 51 when the pages started pouring out of the very bad binding.It's a complete shambles and pretty impossible to read without taking the pages one by one and adding them to a binder clip.
I have no idea why this book is so costly-- over $40.Add to that a pretty bad inaccuracy found between pages 1 - and 38 and I'd say this is not a very satisfying read.Perhaps it gets better in a copy where the pages don't fall out of a brand new book. ... Read more

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Organized crime threatens multiple facets of the United States, including the economy and national security. In fact, the Organized Crime Council was recently reconvened for the first time in 15 years to address this continued threat. Organized crime has taken on an increasingly transnational nature, and with more open borders and the expansion of the Internet, criminals endanger the United States not only from within the borders, but beyond. ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Triad, Tiandihui, List of Chinese Criminal Organizations, 14k Triad, Wo Shing Wo, Sun Yee On, Wo Hop To, Big Circle Gang, Shui Fong, Luen Group. Excerpt:Founded: 1945 The 14K ( K) is a Triad group based in Hong Kong but active internationally. It is the second largest Triad group in the world with around 20,000 members split into thirty subgroups. They are the main rival of the Sun Yee On , which is the largest Triad. The 14K are responsible for large-scale drug trafficking around the world, most of it heroin and opium from China or Southeast Asia . This is their primary business in terms of generating income, but they are also involved in illegal gambling , money laundering , arms trafficking , prostitution , people smuggling , extortion , counterfeiting and, to a lesser extent, home invasion robberies . History The 14K was formed by Kuomintang Lieutenant-General Kot Siu-wong in Guangzhou , China in 1945 as an anti-Communist action group. However, they relocated to Hong Kong in 1949 when the Kuomintang fled from the Communists following the Chinese Civil War . Originally there were fourteen members who were part of the Kuomintang, hence the name 14K. However, some say that 14 stands for the road number of a former headquarters and K stands for Kowloon . During the 1990s, it was the "largest Triad in the world". In 1997, there were a number of gang-related attacks that left 14 people dead. Under Wan Kuok-koi (nicknamed "Broken Tooth Koi", ), the 14K was being challenged by the smaller Shui Fong Triad. The next year, a gunman believed to be connected to the local 14K killed a Portuguese national and wounded another at a sidewalk café in Macau . In 1999, a Portuguese court convicted 45-year-old mob boss Broken Tooth Koi on various criminal charges and sentenced him to 15 years i... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Kidnap Kountry
In 1976,long before governmental seizure of children from parents became Big Business, the US Justice department conspired to place Thomas Leonhard's children in a secret location with a violent step-father and a malicious and irresponsible mother. The father, responsible and loving was rebuffed by law enforcement and numerous federal judges.After putting the children in danger, they failed to monitor the apparent danger, then used "danger" as an excuse to prevent access.
The book sderves as an ideal complement to Stephen Baskerville's expose ("Taken Into Custody," 2007) of government corruption in present-day mass child abduction.A breezy, riveting read. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Riddled with historical errors.
This is a sloppily written and poorly researched book. Major errors appear on the opening page (Herman Rosenthal was one of the few gangsters not to have had a nickname; Cohen repeatedly refers to him as "Beansie"--the monicker of the similarly named "Rosenfeld" who was actually a partner of the murder victim.) Big Jack Zelig is incorrectly identified as William Alberts (his true name was Selig Harry Lefkowitz--a biography, THE STARKER, is being published in February 2008.) Photos are badly labeled. Some of the gangsters are still changing identities even now, years after their deaths. Two pictures (Sam Schepps and Harry Vallon) are captioned differently than the same photos in Andy Edmond's much better AGAINST THE EVIDENCE, which is now out of print but worth reading.
This book is a good guide to the inaccurate reporting on the Becker case, since it seems to rely mostly on newspaper accounts of the trial that were invariably highly unfavorable to the defense. But it should in no way be considered historical fact. Corrupt policeman Becker was an unsavory character, but he went to the chair for a murder that he did not commit. The District Attorney hounded him to his death for political advantage. Cohen portrays this even more unsavory man as some kind of hero.
SATAN'S CIRCUS by Mike Dash is an immensely superior work in every way.

A Gem for Crime Buffs
Author Stanley Cohen has done a thorough job in investigating the murder of gambler Herman "Beansie" Rosenthal in the Times Square area of New York City in 1912.A good portion of the book deals with the trial of the actual murderers by the shady names of Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louie, Dago Frank and Whitey Lewis, and the two trials of the man convicted of orchestrating the hit of Rosenthal, Lieutenant Charley Becker.Becker apparently enlisted three others (Bald Jack Rose, Bridgey Webber, and Harry Vallon) to set up the hit on Rosenthal who then hired the four hitmen to carry out the actual assassination.Becker was afraid of Rosenthal exposing Becker's involvement in shady operations in his police department, and the only way to silence Rosenthal was to place him in the past tense.I feel Becker's mistake was to involve three middlemen who then turned state's evidence against Becker to save their own neck.The four actual hitmen paid the supreme price for their involvement in Sing Sing's electric chair in 1913.Despite two trials Becker also kept a date with the electric chair in July of 1913, a few months after the actual hitmen.The fact that Becker was a police officer who faced execution in Sing Sing made this story front page news from the time of the murder until his execution.The book involves several people in addition to those already mentioned, and I found it hard to keep everyone's role in the drama straight.That, however, is my problem.I feel the author did a wonderful job on this book, and if you enjoy crime stories this one is a dandy.Two sets of pictures show the main characters in addition to New York landmarks in the 1910's such as The Tombs and the Criminal Courts Building connected by the Bridge of Sighs, Rector's Restaurant, New York's Lower East Side, the Tenderloin District (Times Square area), the Hotel Cadillac near the site of the murder at the Metropole Hotel, children hawking newspapers with the cry of "Extra", the building where Lefty Louie and Gyp the Blood were arrested in Queens, and children licking huge blocks of ice in front of a grocery store to ward off the stifling July heat.The pictures, I felt, gave me an idea of what New York City was like during the 1910's.Those who enjoy crime stories will want to make this book a permanent addition to their library. ... Read more

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Growing up in the bosom of the Atlantic City mob, Anthony Russo dreams of living a comparatively normal life in professional boxing, but he is trapped by a double murder and an affair with a beautiful mud wrestler. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Haves and Have Nots in today's America
I read this book a few months ago, and Blauner had me spellbound by the plot; I read it in one sitting.

Other reviewers talk about the family and loyalty themes in the book, but I think Blauner knowingly or not has given us a tale about the despair of contemporary poverty and the incredible struggle to raise onself into a better life.The havenots do not really stand a chance.

Blauner's style summons up the worst aspects of sports and gambling. The book is somewhat depressing, but definitely worth your time.

HCC has brought many great older and more contemporary crime stories to today's readers.This is just one more in their excellent series.

I hope Hard Case Crime will be around for a long time.

Lazy Author = Lousy Book
There are good ideas here, but the author is too lazy to execute them. Just when we need a key scene to resolve some issue, he skips over it. I guess it was too hard for him to write. Amateurish - very very poorly done.

Melodramatic page-turner with great characters
Author Peter Blauner's second novel Casino Moon is a bit of an anomaly in the Hard Case Crime line. Not only does it exceed 320 pages (only two others of the more than 50 novels in the line, The Last Match and Fifty-to-One, have gone that far over the 250-page median), but it is also barely 15 years old, having been first published in 1994 -- after Slow Motion Riot won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel but before Blauner's breakout thriller The Intruder became a national bestseller.

But even the author's original intentions seem to make it a perfect choice for reprinting in this way. As Blauner himself wryly states on his website, "[Casino Moon] was meant to be sort of a quick down-and-dirty pulp novel about a young man trying to get away from his mobbed-up family. So naturally, it ended up taking four years and dozens of painstaking rewrites to get it in shape."

Anthony Russo has always known the mob. After his real father, Mike Dillon, was murdered, Vincent Russo raised him as his own. In fact, the only thing stopping Anthony from being "made" is his lack of Sicilian blood -- well, that and the fact that Anthony hasn't killed anybody yet, despite Vincent continual attempts to make it easy for him. What Anthony really wants, though, is a chance to make his money legitimately, and funding former champion boxer Elijah Barton's comeback, against current champ Terrence Mulvehill, is the opportunity he's been looking for.

But, like Michael Corleone says in Godfather III, "Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in." (What? You expect me to review a mafia novel and not make a Godfather reference? Even Blauner does it, naming a restaurant "Andolini's" -- Andolini was the Corleone family's original surname before Ellis Island officials changed it.)

Anthony finds it difficult to actually do anything on his own. Among other things, Anthony owes people money and wants to support his wife and kids, but his wife's uncle Teddy, the capodecine, always takes half of any money made by his underlings. Other people want their piece of the pie, as well, including his girlfriend Rosemary (who has her own daughter to support).

As he is floundering, Anthony gets a view of the other side from Mulvehill's promoter Frank Diamond, who manages to get a portion of every fee possible through having his son be the manager, renting his own space out for training, and other entirely legal (though not necessarily ethical) means. Sitting in Diamond's $5,000-a-night suite, Anthony notices, "a gold jacuzzi over by the window ... and a bar stocked with 150-year-old bottles of wine. Still, five thousand a night seemed a little steep.... But it must be worth it, I figured, just to know that the guy downstairs only had 75-year-old wine." He soon realizes, "Growing up around wiseguys was the best preparation I could have had for the fight game."

Casino Moon is unnecessarily melodramatic at times (does Teddy really need to have a son who killed himself, a mentally retarded daughter, a wife addicted to downers, an eating disorder, and prostate cancer all in one book?), especially with the constant parent-child issues present and an ending seemingly designed to make men cry. Also, Blauner jumps from first person for Anthony's story to third person for everyone else, making it a little confusing in the beginning until I got used to the style.

But despite these complaints, Blauner kept the pages turning, if sometimes filling them with a little too much detail. His characters are richly drawn, and I can still see their faces clearly in my mind. I really felt Anthony's tension at all the hands pulling him in different directions -- and his struggles between his wife and his mistress make a strong case for fidelity. (One lesson: don't piss off a woman with no dignity left to lose.) Casino Moon is by no means a perfect novel, but Blauner tries hard and succeeds for the most part, particularly in making the mafia human.

Woke up this morning
This story, like many other Hard Case reprints, probably owes a debt to Night and the City - Criterion Collection (and its source material) for its basic plot-line."Casino Moon", a reprint from 1994, is also an interesting omen for "The Sopranos", which was a little less than five years over the horizon.

The extended cast of characters will now look somewhat familiar to those who hung in for the "Sopranos"' nearly decade-long run.Anthony Russo, the nominal hero of the book, is the adopted son of a mid-level Atlantic City mobster.Anthony wants to get out of the business, even as his dad is trying to get him made, through an over-his-head attempt to manage a fading professional boxer.Meanwhile, Teddy, the mob boss, is getting squeezed by cancer on one side, and the greedy New York City families on the other.There's also a local cop who feels kinship with Anthony, and a variety of women suffering the consequences of long-ago life choices.

Author Peter Blauner has a lot of balls to juggle here, but he does so deftly.He executes a lengthy and satisfying climax which cuts in and around the prize fight depicted on the reprint cover.The book's longer and denser than most Hard Case reprints (due in fact to it being one of their newer titles), with a larger cast of characters.The writing style is also more edgy and graphic, with many characters meeting truly horrific ends.Two characters are given modestly happy endings, at least, and it's a nice tribute to Blauner's craft that you probably won't be able to guess at least one of those two beforehand.

More than a mob story
More than a gritty mob story, which it is, this is a novel--filled with tragedy, redemption, and visions of love and loyalty.Blauner's characterizations are excellent, with heroes and villains who share flawed personalities along with human qualities.
It's a thick book for Hard Case Crime loyalists, but breezes by like an off-shore wind from the Atlantic.The 1990's setting of Atlantic City hasn't changed much over the years... and certainly the excitement of this book hasn't dimished. ... Read more

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Low Light is about a scheme to neutralize the FBI by blackmailing its young Director, J. Edgar Hoover, in Atlantic City during the summer of 1929.Al Rubin, the narrator protagonist, is an ordinary man who wants a better life and is offered one by the New York gangster Meyer Lansky and by the Boss of Atlantic City, Enoch “Nucky” Johnson.Low Light is a novel that weaves a plausible explanation for a 20th Century mystery – why did J. Edgar Hoover deny that there was a national crime syndicate operating in America? Until the late 1960s, Hoover claimed that criminals were too dumb to be organized. In 1929, Lansky threw a bachelor party in Atlantic City to which he invited all the men who controlled the alcohol trafficking network of America’s cities east of the Mississippi. During the weeklong party, a loose confederation of gang lords was organized into what would morph into The Mob and into its assassination arm, Murder Incorporated, just a few years hence. In Washington, Hoover had just been given a job as the first permanent director of the investigations bureau of the Justice Department. Young Hoover had made a name for himself when he’d built a first-class filing system and used it to keep incriminating records of the high and mighty as well as of the “low-life Commies and immigrant trash” who were trying to destroy The American Way of Life.Atlantic City was a hotbed of immigrant trash, ground zero for the culture wars of the day – the Las Vegas of the Jazz Age. In Cutler’s tale,Atlantic City’s people – the African Americans who staffed the hotels and restaurants, the Italians who built the hotels, the Jews who owned the stores and the supply businesses, the white folk from the farms who owned the land and the Republican Party – compete for the brass ring. The characters are distinct and believable. Al Rubin tells their story as he tells us what happened to him when he was offered a legitimate, can’t-miss business opportunity in exchange for taking a photograph of the Director in his comp’ed hotel room on Decoration Day, 1929. This is the story about the ways of power in big city neighborhoods, not about angst in the Gatsby suburbs.Lansky and Nucky Johnson, in Stanley J. Cutler’s tale, see Federal power as a threat to their interstate business plan. They know of Hoover because of his leadership role in the Palmer Raids, the arrest and deportation ofhundreds ofimmigrants on charges of subversion. Hoover was a ruthless publicity hound, a darling of the guardians of moral rectitude, the one man in a position to bypass the corrupt cops and judges that Johnson and his ilk kept in their pockets by throwing prosecutions directly into the hard-to-fix Federal Courts.Al Rubin - an ex-garment worker, ex-boxer turned studio photographer - is just the man for the job. He’s the Everyman who wrestles with his conscience. Is it right to eavesdrop on an eavesdropper? What is the morallegitimacy of laws in a country that views selling beer as a crime, that allows the New York Stock Exchange as it closes down casinos, that deports working people without due process? Cutler compels the reader to see parallels between Prohibition and The War on Drugs, The Red Menace and Radical Jihad, European immigration and Central American immigration, and how adoption of the telephone, radio and automobiles foreshadowed efforts to adjust today’s America to the technologies of the 21st Century.As the fast-paced story develops, Al’s carefully planned photo-shoot goes awry. He runs for his life into a dangerous world of bootleggers, IRA gunmen, big time gamblers, anti-Semitic sea captains, African American race jockeys, flappers, gun molls, G Men, and powerful politicians. Readers who like the HBO miniseries “Boardwalk Empire” will find a great deal to enjoy in this entertaining and informative novel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Looking forward to seeing more great reads from this author
Great read!- a page turner with interesting well-fleshed out characters. I particularly like the author's handling of dialogue. These characters sound like real people. Cutler is obviously a historian at heart. He does a masterful job of setting the historical context for the events that unfold in Atlantic City circa 1929 when political bosses/racketeers ran everything in the city. Detailed, lively descriptions of life on the boardwalk provide a sense of place, with historical figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Enoch "Nucky" Johnson figuring prominently in the plot.If you are looking forward to seeing the HBO miniseries "Boardwalk Empire", reading this book will whet your appetite!

Low Light Sparkles
As a history buff who has spent a good chunk of time in Atlantic City I couldn't pass up a book about the birth of organized crime in New Jersey's most famous resort.I am certainly glad that I did.

Low Light is an amazing tale that moves from Philadelphia to Atlantic City as photographer Al Rubin becomes "innocently" involved in getting the goods on a young J. Edgar Hoover.His opportunity appears to be an open door to a very desirable studio location on the famous Steel Pier.But the real benefit of Al's activity is to Atlantic City's politically connected power-broker, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson.

I must admit, I bought this new novel because of my interest in New Jersey and Atlantic City history.What I discovered was a well written and meticulously researched work that is a wonderfully delightful mix of very real people, some plucked from history and others created in the author's imagination.

Reading Low Light was an experience akin to reading E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Kevin Baker's Paradise Alley, or Caleb Carr's The Alienist - putting literature into an historical context seemingly lifted from the pages of old newspapers - delivering the "feel of an era" that most history texts simply don't capture.The tale begun in Low Light (which promises to be the first of a trilogy) by Stan Cutler, captures the 1930s perfectly, and promises much more to come as Al and Ida Rubin and their daughters begin a new, more prosperous life in Atlantic City and to footing gained by Nucky Johnson in forming the future of Atlantic City.

Low Light is clearly a winner.I can't wait to see more from Stan Cutler.

A fascinating piece of historical fiction
Low Light: Birth of Organized Crime in Jazz Age Atlantic City is a fast-paced, well-constructed novel inhabited by interesting characters, brought to life in masterful style by author Stanley J. Cutler. Other reviewers have gone into the plot line at length, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say that the story is compelling, and the era is captured beautifully, in a way that invites the reader into the world of 1929 Atlantic City and makes the visit feel authentic. After being introduced to Al and Ida Rubin and their family and getting to know more about the historical figures Hoover, Johnson, and Lansky through Cutler's eyes, I'm looking forward to the next installment with great anticipation.

Low Light provides High Entertainment
I read "Low Light" after listening to a number of audio books and found reading it was like hearing a radio show. The characters are clear and distinguishable, each with their own voice, and the clarity of exposition is static-free. This is a novel that breathes life into our historical experience with a first-hand, well-visualized story.

If you can imagine playing poker where the chips are pieces of your own life then you'll enjoy the rising stakes for the lead character. I like best that he is an ordinary guy who runs considerable risks and manages to overcome the odds surprisingly well. "Low Light" describes how a decent family man with mainstream morals develops when exposed to unexpected and dangerous outcomes. You'll wish Cutler had written even more - which is the best indicator of a thumbs-up experience.

A Fun Read
Low Light is a very entertaining and educational book. Stanley Cutler delivers a wonderful work of historical fiction that tells a great story about Prohibition era America.I love the characters and the storyline - Mobsters, immigrants and J Edgar Hoover in a dress! Awesome! ... Read more

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Product Description
It's an exciting guide that helps game players find a way around the city population, learn how to kill, fight, and bribe their way to the top, recruit skilled gangsters to boost a team, take over new parts of the city, defend personal territory, flout the city legal system, and other strategies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

This book is just what you need!
This book is great is tells you just whaty you need to suceed on Gangsters. I have had Gangsters for nearly a year now and i have found the book most useful.

Pretty Lousy
I have purchased several of Prima's strategy guides because most of them are actually quite helpful.This one, however, is the worst I've read.It provides no real assistance at all.My reccomendation: Don't buy this. It's worse than a Dominican Cigar.

It was very good
The book had some info that was in the manuel. But I really like the story in the back

Save your money...Part II
Same comment as another reviewer...95% of the info is in the game manual.

Easy to find anything about the game!
I think it was a good helper and deserves a good grade it tells everything you nedd to know and i think if you need help for this game you should buy it not to exspansive either! ... Read more

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Organized Crime in Our Times provides readers with a clear understanding of organized crime, including its definition and causes, how it is categorized under the law, models to explain its persistence, and the criminal justice response to organized crime, including investigation, prosecution, defense, and sentencing.

Customer Reviews (1)

COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF ORGANIZED CRIME
A comprehensive treatment of the history, types, causes of organized crime, plus the laws and techniques of police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys.Good photos, index, and critical thinking exercises.I'm keeping this one! ... Read more

Product Description
Introduces an array of colorful criminals, crimes, and corruption in a study that traces the evolution of American organized crime, from the rule of the Mafia, to the rise of other ethnic gangs, to the stronger than ever Mafia-gang alliances of the future. 20,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Entertaining and Intelligent
This is a very well done look into some of the organized criminal organizations that Americans tend to hear less about in the media, compared to the Italian mob. Usually you only hear about the Chinese mafia or Russian mob in action movies, but this book explains how they operate, their traditions, ethnic culture, and their individual crime culture. They explain exactly how each group got it's roots in America. It also links their roots with American foreign policy, like how some of the Vietnamese mob guys were originally hardcore South Vietnamese army guys that the US was working with in Vietnam. It also shows how the drug trade democratized the crime world. But it's also a good book to read if you like reading about how the mafia works, because they really all work the same way, whether you're in the Bloods or Crips, or the Lezgi, or the Yakuza, whatever.

The New Ethnic Mobs: The Changing Face of Organized Crime in
This book is that ish!, all you need and want too know about mobs,street gangs,and diffrent ethnic mafias,from the Junior Black Mafia,Bloods&Crips, all the way too the Chinese triads dig me.A sure hood banger,even if your from the suburbs. ... Read more

Product Description
There is extensive and detailed academic literature on the legal development of international crimes such as war crimes and crime against humanity. However, not much attention has been paid to other serious crimes, including narcotics-related offenses, human trafficking and money laundering, which do not necessarily amount to international crimes in the traditional sense. The purpose of this monograph is to fill this gap and offer a critical analysis of developments in the field of transnational organised crime under international law. The book is divided into two parts. Part I is entitled 'Norms, Principles, and Concepts'. It traces the history of organised crime and explores key concepts and norms relating to the practice from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It then looks at legal obligations imposed upon States as well as non-State actors in relation to transnational organised crime. Part II illustrates how these norms, principles and obligations are translated and enforced in practice. This will be done through case studies at the level of national law (Thailand, Serbia and the UK), regional law (European Union) and international law (United Nations).'A book of many parts, its thematic coherence comes from its devotion to identifying the social threat posed by organised crime and the legal steps taken at the international and national levels against that threat. Rich with example and illustration and written in a light, direct, style, it will provide a lucid guide for practitioners, policy-makers and students to the largely untraversed territory of the international legal system set up to suppress transnational organised crime' - Professor Neil Bolster, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. '...the international law governing organized crime is a close relative of the body of law applicable to the International Criminal Court and similar institutions. It provides a forum to address issues of more general concern, such as the scope of universal jurisdiction, immunities, statutory limitation and extradition. Tom Obokata's study, with its original and in some ways unique perspective, enriches our knowledge of the field' - Professor William Schabas, Irish Centre for Human Rights. 'The book is well written, its documentation is quite exhaustive, and its thesis is timely and compelling' - Professor M.Cherif Bassiouni, DePaul University College of Law. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Book
The book came as described, slight damaged, but it was as good as your word, and it was what I expected.

I would introduce it into evidence, as to the question of corruption
I have read it three times in the past twenty years, and I am ready to pull this worn copy out again.

It's a valid, step by step exhibit/evidence of corruption in general. It is a small indepth pie section, but it goes a long way in determining the level to which people are unaware of just how the real world of political corruption works. There are many people in this world who just don't understand this, and therefore trust the government with their safety, their family, their future and our constitution. They look at many of us who question the corruption of responsibility & authority as some sort of abomination when in fact, we are doing only what is charged of us in accepting the inheritance of a free republic. This is no hobby; this is our life and our future. Sorry this isn't more in detail.... I will finish the review very soon.

chilling book
I actually read this book in the 80's and lost my copy, so I ordered another one. If anyone wants to know why the "war on drugs" is such a failure and a farce, this is a must read book.

How to Destabilize the International Economy without even trying
When one reads this book, it is like dropping into the hole of Alice in Wonderland, or falling into one of Carlos Castenada's peyote trances never to come out again. One arrives unprepared at a station in a new dimension of human existence. It is an odyssey "across," "within," "through" and ""around" the world of where drugs, and the drug Kingpins that traffic them, meet with our non-existent "shadow government."

Both are overlapping "nether worlds" that we are told do not exist, but exist they do: as partners in crimes at some place well above our heads. Not only do they exist, but if one can believe the expanded paradigm of the U.S. government put forth by Berkeley Professor, Peter Dale Scott, the drug cartels and those agents and agencies of government that intersect with them -- which promote or passively allow them to ply their trade -- make up the "Sixth Estate" of our government (with the "Press", the mob and other organized crime cartels being the Fourth and the Fifth).

This book is a tale of such staggering proportions that were the facts not all in perfect alignment with the reality we see in the ghettoes where the drug trade is mostly plied, one would believe it to have been invented: made from whole cloth like a fairy tale. However, once the motive of money, unimaginable amounts of money, enters the picture, then our senses begin to tell us that this is not fiction, no fairy tale at all: but the outer limits of what can happen when greed and the pursuit of money are let loose, unbridled, unrestrained to seek its own logical path and endpoint.

As but two examples, during the 1970s, before the "real" drugs crisis with "crack cocaine" ever got off the ground, there was so much money in marijuana trafficking that the drug kingpins bought, all along the Atlantic coast, from New Jersey to Miami, all of the available multi-million dollar beachfront mansions they could find. The purpose of this vast investment: To use them as storage houses for transshipments of the vast amounts of marijuana: A whole class of U.S. property was used only as storage sheds for marijuana.

As another example, in order to support their defensive needs, the drug Kingpins, would "let" contracts for the development of new equipment needed to support their smuggling efforts. Things like new guns, radar equipment, night goggles, submarines, excavation equipment, poisons, etc. were procured through private contractors just as the military does with new weapon systems.

And as always, their biggest problem was never finding buyers for their product, but how to transport and launder staggering amounts of money, which with the advent of cocaine, weighed more than the drugs that were sold, and was much more difficult to conceal and dispose of. The sophistication with which large sums of money was laundered and otherwise invested in the normal economy, even in the days when this book was written, still are enough to amaze the best Phds in economics: setting up and "breaking out" bonding houses, issues stocks, setting up shell companies, etc., ad infinitum. During the 1980s, for instance, 85% of all Miami paper money tested positive for trances of cocaine.

Given that the amount of money involved is enough to destabilized even the largest governments in the world, it is easy to see why governments were able to rationalized being and staying involved in the drug trade: better to regulate and give order to it than to allow random criminals to destabilize the entire world.

This book tells the complete story of how a handful of drug cartels and renegade drug entrepreneurs, did almost that.

Five stars

A wealth of information
James Mills was given the opportunity of a lifetime - to insert himself into the inner workings of an agency of the American government that targeted international narcotics trafficking.What he discovered may surprise many because the results of his observations and interviews exposed the ugly truth behind the drug trade.Drugs are not just sold by low level punks on the street corner.The real money is made by wealthy individuals that blend into the upper levels of society and control their governments.Because governments around the world benefit from the drug trade as much or more than the actual dealers.

Mills had access to all levels and agents of Centac, a government agency that, in addition to the DEA and CIA, targeted international drug sellers.But instead of picking them off one by one and making numerous low level arrests with dope on the table, Centac went after the larger conspiracies by developing long term surveillance operations that led to extremely large seizures of drugs, currency, and property.

Mills also discovered that the various world governments, while proclaiming to fight the war on drugs, were more complicit than anything else.Numerous witness interviews illustrate that the US government had all the information it needed to end the war on drugs, but it stood to lose too much if it took a true hard line.Mills expose is illuminating and frightening in what it uncovers.

The Underground Empire is brilliantly written and reads much more like a novel than a journalist's account of a government agency's actions.It's only real fault is the length.At 1165 pages, it is easy for a reader to become overwhelmed and not finish.Having said that, however, there is so little information that could be left out that it is hard to say where Mills could have pared it down.The only other complaint is that there are times where Mills uses quotes during conversations to which he was not a party.The reader is left wondering if he took any liberties with these conversations and "created" what he believed took place in his absence. Overall, however, it is a book that anyone involved in law enforcement, or otherwise, will find illuminating, unsettling, and fascinating. ... Read more