Archive for March 2023

Catering to lovers of the well-written word and the well-mixed drink, Cocktail Noir is a lively look at the intertwining of alcohol and the underworld–represented by authors of crime both true and fictional and their glamorously disreputable characters, as well as by real life gangsters who built Prohibition-era empires on bootlegged booze.

This book features colorful information on: The Sicilian Mafia, The “First Family” of the American Mafia, The “Real” Untouchables, The Mob and Politicians, and The Five New York families. Packed full of up-to-date gangster information, this guide will satisfy even the most ardent true crime enthusiasts.

Eddie Trascher was a gentleman gangster, but he never wanted to be part of the mob. For 50 years, from the pre-Castro Havana casinos to Los Angeles, Trascher stole from mob-owned casinos, scammed gangsters, and was one of the top bookies in the country. He capped his career as a confidential informant for Florida law…

An in-depth exposé on East Harlem’s notorious Purple Gang whose murderous exploits became a media obsession and Mafia lynchpin. In the late 1970s, a string of seemingly unconnected murders had Harlem police and federal authorities at their wits’ end until they realized several commonalities. The victims were all either Mafia members or potential witnesses of…

In Garden State Gangland, Scott M. Deitche sets the historical record straight by providing the first overall history of the mob in New Jersey, from the early turn of the century Black Hand gangs to the present, and looks at how influential they were was, not only to goings-on the Garden State but across the…

Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld Bootleggers, gambling, ringleaders, arsonists, narcotics dealers and gang murders–a variety of characters flourished in the era known as Prohibition, and Tampa, Florida was where they battled for supremacy of the criminal underworld.