Hundreds of books have been written about the American Mafia, but none has told how it came into existence. This one does. Mafia books are notoriously unreliable, too often filled with the recycled errors of earlier authors. This one has been painstakingly researched from primary sources, including interviews with surviving family members and a vast, previously unexamined Secret Service archive. The result is an extraordinary work of history that grips, astonishes and chills the blood like a thriller.
It tells the little-known story of the Morello family, pioneers of protection rackets, bizarre rituals and Mafia wars. Before the Five Families who dominated US organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare.
Mike Dash follows the birth of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the wharves of New Orleans to the streets of Little Italy. He brings to life the remarkable villains and unusual heroes of the Mafia's early years, and does so without ever resorting to fiction or "imagined" history.
The First Family is more than just a pulse-quickening Mafia narrative. This is how it really happened. Mike Dash is a historian with an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD from the University of London. A former journalist whose work has appeared in numerous national newspapers and magazines, Dash is the author of seven books, including Tulipomania, Satan's Circus Thug, and Batavia's Graveyard. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. The Barrel Mystery
The room felt like the bottom of a grave. It was damp, low ceilinged, windowless and - on this raw-boned New York night - as chilly and unwelcoming as a policeman's stare.
Outside, on Prince Street in the heart of Little Italy, a fine drizzle slanted down to puddle amid the piles of rotting garbage strewn along the edges of the road, leaving the cobbles treacherous and greasy. Inside, beneath a hoarding advertising lager beer, a featureless cheap working men's saloon stretched deep into the bowels of a dingy tenement. At this late hour - it was past three on the morning of 14 April 1903 - the tavern was shuttered-up and silent. But in the shadows at the far end of the bar stood a rough-hewn, tight-closed door. And in the room behind that door, Benedetto Madonia sat eating his last supper.
The place was advertised as a spaghetti restaurant, but it was in truth an eating-house of the most basic sort. An old stove squatted against one wall, belching fumes. Musty strings of garlic dangled from the walls, mingling their stale odour with the smell of boiling vegetables. The remaining fittings consisted of several rough, low tables, a handful of ancient chairs, and a rusting iron sink that jutted from a corner of the room. Gas lamps spewed out mustard light, and the naked floorboards had been scattered with cedar sawdust, which, at the end of a busy day, coagulated in a thick mix of spit, onion-skins, and the butts of dark Italian cigars.
Madonia dug hungrily into a stew of beans, beets and potatoes, hearty peasant food from his home province of Palermo. He was a powerfully built man of average height, handsome after the fashion of the time with a high forehead, chestnut eyes and a wave of thick brown hair. A large moustache, carefully waxed until it tapered to points, offset the sharp slash of his Roman nose. He dressed better than most working men, wearing a suit, high collar, tie and well-soled shoes - all signs of some prosperity. Exactly how he earned his money, though, was scarcely obvious. If asked, Madonia claimed to be a stonemason. But even a casual observer could see that this was a man unused to manual labour. His 43-year-old body had begun to sag, and his soft hands - neatly manicured - bore no trace of an artisan's calluses.
