NIIIICCEE, I'm the first person to review this book. So you have nothing but me to base your judgment on...Don't know if I can handle the pressure. Well, (deep breath) here goes.

Ahhh the Mafia. The organization that denies it even exists. An organization filled with bad guys you Hate to Love. The thugs of the underworld that you Love to Hate.

While reading The New York Times online one afternoon (so I was bored at work) I stumbled across a new book release. The title Takedown, The Fall of the last Mafia Empire It caught my attention, I thought I might like to read it, so I put in on my Christmas list and waited patiently for Santa to bring me my new book.

Takedown is a Non-Fiction book written by Rick Cowan and Douglas Century.

Rick (or Ricky as he is known to his fellow police buddies, and me...since we're best buds..o.k just kiddin' but it sounded good? right??) Cowan is a nineteen-year veteran of NYPD where he is still employed as a detective first-grade in the Organized Crime Investigations Division. His role in the story that fill the pages of this book earned him a promotion from, then police commissioner of New York City, William Bratton Himself.

Douglas Century has authored various pieces in several national magazines and has written the book Street kingdom: Five years inside the Franklin Avenue posse in addition to Takedown. He is also a contributing author for the New York Times. (hummm... no wonder that book review was so persuasive, "I got hooked and tooked!").

So what’s this book about?
This book is Rick’s account of a seven year investigation of what the New York Police Department named “Operation Wasteland”.

Why operation wasteland?
Because it has to do with the Mafia’s Monopolization of the Waste removal industry in New York City.

In other words…garbage.

This was said by Rockefeller himself to have been the most “perfect” monopoly in American history. That’s right folks, the people who were “Carters” or “Carting” away the garbage of such big names as The New York Stock Exchange, The United Nations, Madison Square Garden, and Bloomingdale’s (just to drop a few big names) were none other than members all five of New York’s Crime families: Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Colombo, Bonanno.

So the Mafia ran the garbage truck’s? What’s the big deal?
Well it would not have been a big deal if not for one simple thing. There are laws set on the amount a company can charge customers per square foot of compacted garbage. The members of the five families made million’s upon million’s of dollars boosting these prices. In some cases as much as five times the set rate. Like anyone would complain? This arrangement dates back four decades. So this was the norm for most of the newbies on the block. They took it for what it was.

The members of the five families agreed on set boundaries of who “owned” the rights to certain area’s of the city.

But of course greed always comes in to play and somebody always wants more. Someone decides they want someone else’s piece of the pie and that’s when you hear about some of the Mob related fights, beatings, bombing or even the deaths that were involved in relation to carter's fighting over territory. They wanted that trash man! It meant big bucks.

And... what a perfect way to dispose of a body. If the Mafia owns the garbage companies they could just simply inform truck number 32 of a certain package in a certain dumpster and have it neatly disposed of…not a clue would remain once the rats and seagulls got to it.

The Mafia OWNED New York City.

Well...so to speak, but think about it. Lets say the entire City of New York became fed up with paying the unbelievable prices being charged for their trash removal. The Mob could shut the trash removal down, and with in a matter of days New York City would be among some of the filthiest slums in the world. Pretty sneaky huh? Pretty freakin’ good idea too. Too bad it’s illegal.

The Mob kept the trash flowing out, while Wall Street and other companies kept the trash flowing in. This was a never ending problem that needed to be fixed. So Rick Cowan the best man for the job is called in the save the world...er, um, I mean save the day.

An excerpt from Chapter One of the book “Takedown: The fall of the Last Mafia Empire”

“By the early 90’s the cartel had been in place nearly four decades, four times as long as the Mob’s last license to print money-since the reign of Luciano and Capone and Dutch Schultz. In the eyes of many veteran investigators, this was on e criminal empire that would never be broken. But for all their power, the cartel bosses were about to fall prey to a scheme straight out of the Trojan War-a plan to wheel a white-horse company inside the criminal club. To take down this massive enterprise, I was going to have to pull off the scam of a lifetime: convince these cagey old-time Italian gangsters that a thirty-four year old Irish detective was actually one of the boys.”


Then begins the Seven year search to break into the empire

Rick goes undercover with Salvatore Benedetto; a legitimate carter who doesn't over charge for trash removal, and who is being bullied by tough guys who don't like Sal making them look bad by offering the actual price the garbage removal should be. Not to mention the bad guys want a "stop" that Sal took over back...which means trouble on the rise.

Rick Poses as Sal's “Cousin Danny”. Sal shows "Danny" the ropes of the trash business. Enabling him to begin the search to dig deeper and deeper through the garbage that is the Mob underworld. This is all in an attempt to take the Mafia out of New York City's trash and catch some of the higher up members of the family. Ricky knew this would be no easy task. And it wasn’t. After years of on-the-job training on various other Mob related jobs, he was just the man to do it. In time he was able to place himself exactly where he needed to be for a TAKEDOWN!

Detective Cowan also goes into great detail of the finer workings of the NYPD surveillance teams, bugging specialist and the difficulty that goes into planting bugs, and the tedious work that surveillance really is. You can see the humor that Detective Cowan (Ricky if you will) must surely have in some of the accounts. (Or I wouldn’t think he would give us the reader the pleasure of reading such antics)

One story in particular was pretty funny

An Excerpt from Chapter 3 of “Takedown: The fall of the Last Mafia Empire”

“This time we sent him tickets to a Yankees game. Told him he was the proud winner of four tickets to see the Bronx Bombers, mailed them to his girlfriends house. “Look at this, I got four rickets to the Yankees game, “ he said. “I won ‘em from some organization” His girlfriend was in the background: “I don’t know about that, Alan. Sounds pretty suspicious to me.” She was a lot sharper than he was. But then, Baldie Longo was no Rhodes scholar.

He drove to Yankee stadium and I tailed him into the parking lot. I was wearing a full Con Edison workman’s uniform. Baldie went in to watch the Yankees, and within seconds we had the whole Lincoln ripped apart, installing the bug. But three quarters of the way through the installation, the cops inside the stadium radioed that he was on the way out. We barely had time to get his seats but back in place. As it turned out Longo was only on a bathroom run.

The bug worked for exactly two blocks and the crapped out a second time. Manufacturers defect. It was draining his battery. He took his Lincoln to the shop but the mechanic couldn’t figure out what was going on with his battery. Later, Longo left his car double-parked right in front of a fire hydrant on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. We towed the Lincoln and ripped our bug right back out. Al that work for nothing. What was the point of trying again? We realized that we were no match for Baldie’s bad guy luck”

This is just a taste of some of the interesting stories that the author has to share.

So…What’d you think of the book Elaine?

I thought this book was a little rough to start out. I prefer books that I can sit down start reading before I know it I'm swept up in it. It took me a great deal of time to even get past the fourth chapter, I had to force myself to even get that far. Not that it isn't interesting, there was just a lot to unfold first and a lot of details to go over. With out said details I would have been lost so they were needed. I had a lot to absorb, this whole shoot 'em up cop thing is new to me.

It’s difficult to set a story as this one up though, I’ll give the writers a break :)

This book isn’t only about Operation Wasteland, it also goes into some detail about The Mafia’s attempts at other money making schemes such as gambling and drugs. One scheme in particular was stock market fraud by pumping penny stocks and dumping them, sadly leaving unsuspecting investors with nothing but some useless paper. Which I took interest in as I work in the Securities Industry and I always like to hear stories of these idiots trying to make a buck and getting busted.

You really have to follow along and it's not a good idea to sit the book down, to say... chase after your wet naked kid after he jumped out of the bath tub as you sat reading a book waiting for him to prune...it's hard to pick back up.

Once I got going though it was over... I couldn’t put the book down, just because I wanted to know what would happen next and how it would end. This is how I personally judge a book...If I can't put it down, and in time I couldn't. I also found I had such a great interest in all of the Characters involved and the inner workings of the NYPD as well as the Mafia. I even found myself worrying over Sal and Rick as these were very dangerous people they were dealing with, I just knew something bad was going to happen.

Mr. Cowan and Mr. Century have done a wonderful job spilling this tale out to the reader.

It left me wanting for more, I like that.

That's all I got.

E-

Recommended: Yes