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War of the Godfathers

War of the Godfathers

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not a bad book
Review: "War of the Godfather's" is not that bad of a book. Roemer does write a great story in the first half of the book, it is filled with action and suspense. The last half of the book is the weak part of it. Roemer constantly pats himself and the other agents on the back, only to get egg on their faces when the Chicago boss, Accardo, walks. By mixing fact with fiction, it does give a good story, thats what is missing in the last half.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Totally Fictional and slanderous, except for...
Review: ...being correct that Spilotro and others are now dead. It especialy slandered Charles Bonanno, and has a parallel to Guiliani also stopping an SEC action by Bonanno, who actually was a computer programer and top-investigator, and not just related to Joseph Bonanno, and is the same person that the Bass book, The Predictors, talked about, when it mentioned Rudolph Guilianni overruling Bonanno, in regard to investigations of insider trading on Wall Street and how the expertize, of various blackjack related mathematicians, like Thorp and others, was used to coverup insider trading activities. Bonanno wanted to exhonerate Thorp and pursue another blackjack related group involved in the theories of portfolio risk management, while Giulianni wasted time and efforts, and possilby delayed the investigations of organized crime manipulation of stocks by perhaps 15+ years.

A plassable theory linking organized crime and wall street can even be developed on how books like Roemer's have been used to coverup this derailment of real investigations. Here we have a definite link between this book presenting fairy tales about Joseph Bonanno making attempts to unretire, as if they were true, and actions by Guilianni and the FBI, to derail the SEC investigations once lead by Charles Bonanno, about how organized crime was allied now with certain people on Wall Street, who were manipulating blackjack mathematicians into making insider trades look like clever exploitation of mathematical trading models, and both taking over from the old mob in Las Vegas and moving from activities, like moving drugs, to the even more profitable world to moving drug money.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fiction
Review: As I was reading this book by Roemer I tried to think of some of the events actually happening and then I realized that this was fiction. I still liked the book even though it was fictional because it was somewhat entertaining.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Re: Joseph from Quebec
Review: Have to agree with Lars: Accardo is by far the most powerful mob boss in the history of this country. Where the New York mob was split and disorganized and ran a relatively small part of the country, Accardo and the outfit ran practically every other area, not just Chicago, but LA to Vegas to Kansas City and most points in between. The fact Accardo never spent a night in prison is enough to show you how good he was at what he did. Of course, Bonanno was small potatoes compared to the other NY Godfathers, so we'll never be able to tell who would have won a "real" war.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Re: Joseph from Quebec
Review: Have to agree with Lars: Accardo is by far the most powerful mob boss in the history of this country. Where the New York mob was split and disorganized and ran a relatively small part of the country, Accardo and the outfit ran practically every other area, not just Chicago, but LA to Vegas to Kansas City and most points in between. The fact Accardo never spent a night in prison is enough to show you how good he was at what he did. Of course, Bonanno was small potatoes compared to the other NY Godfathers, so we'll never be able to tell who would have won a "real" war.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The worst
Review: I have read all of late SA William F. Roemer's novels, and this is without question the most repugnant volume of them all. Not only does he ficticiously involve himself in the story (as the subliminal Richards), but he insists on making Joseph Bonanno (RIP) a master criminal. What he fails or refuses to understand is that Bonanno and his son Salvatore were ousted from the Cosa Nostra in 1968 when their battle for supremacy failed against the other New York City families. They retired to Tuscon where Bonnano tried to pull off some small-time schemes with car dealerships in California by using his son and a few other down-and-out wannabe wiseguys as fronts for his crooked business transactions. The simple fact was, though, that he was no longer a Mafia power. Yet in 1986, when all the Chicago and Kansas City mob leaders have been convicted of skimming from casinos and sentenced to long prison terms, he suddenly reinvigorates his Mafia standing at the age of 81 and decides to fight 80-year-old Anthony Accardo for primacy in Las Vegas? What a farce. Roemer shows his cheap taste for fiction with such a ridiculous storyline.

Perhaps what caused this reader to put the book down so frequently was the author's stubborness in refusing to hire an editor for the book. It literally reads like an 7th grade english class thesis paper on how the FBI and its crooked director J.E. Hoover was justified in waiting until the '60s to attack the Mafia; how Anthony (Big Tuna) Accardo was a gentleman (he was not), and was the most powerful boss in the nation (he also was not - far from it, any NYC family could have crushed his little Outfit in no-time), and how Accardo waged war against the octogenarian Joseph Bonanno (which he also did not). This, and all of Roemer's other books, are disgraceful in their continual self-aggrandisizing of the author (including photos of Roemer as a young boxer in the book "The Enforcer," which was supposed to be on ANTHONY SPILOTRO), in their childish grammatical errors stemming from Roemer's refusal to leave editing to someone who knows what they're doing, and in their white-washing of the FBI's unpardonable blunders and blackmail throughout the reign of Roemer's hero, J. Edgar Hoover.

I highly recommend the reader to think before spending the (money) on the book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A work of fact and fiction
Review: Roemer has made use of some facts and mixed them with fiction to bring us a entertaning book to read. The story is of the war between the Chicago Outfit run by Tony Accardo and the Bonanno family led by Joe Bonanno. The war is mostly the fiction part of the book in telling us how Bonanno wants to move into Vegas that is currently being run by Chicago. Roemer gives us some stories that help to play into this plot and for the first part of the book it works and it is entertaining. The second part of the book from what I can gather is all fact in dealing with trials of Chicago mob figures and how the FBI comes out short. At times it is hard to tell what is fact or fiction, but it is not so much of a hinderence that the reader will be put off. I think that anyone that has an interest in organized crime novels will enjoy this

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THE CHAMPION BREED OF MAFIA BOOKS
Review: This is a very well written book in my opinion. Roemer has several good books on the chicago mob and this is one of the best books he has written. It tells the story very well.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Re: Quebec Joseph
Review: What does a Canadian know about the Chicago Outfit? Accardo was the Godfather of all Godfathers. He ran Chicago for half-a-century, without splitting power like the NY families, and then ran Vegas, too.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Re: Quebec Joseph
Review: What does a Canadian know about the Chicago Outfit? Accardo was the Godfather of all Godfathers. He ran Chicago for half-a-century, without splitting power like the NY families, and then ran Vegas, too.


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