Cigar City Mafia : A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld

Rating:
Summary: Author wacks mob book
Review: I really looked forward to reading this book. My family was a part of Ybor City for 3+ generations and my grandfather never tires of telling tales of Tampa's lawless past. (Although he was not a participant, it was impossible to live in that time and place and not know stories of the open corruption all around.) I should have just listened to my abuelo. This book takes a potentially fascinating topic and turns it into a mind-numbingly dull list of names and murders. It reads like a rap sheet, with very little color or context. It's not even chronological, with brief tales of one mobster plopped between stories from different decades for no apparent reason. As an aspiring author myself, it pains me to see prose tortured worse than an FBI informant. Unfortunately, that's what happens much more often one would expect in a published work. Sentences are sometime tangled worse than a bowl of linguini, forcing the reader to tease them apart. And if read "part of his face was blown off" one more time in a description of a mafia hit, my own face may have blown off. Besides the stylistic problems, there were also some factual errors. I found one pretty quick: on the first page of the first chapter. The author states that Tampa became a city in 1873 when it was actually incorporated in 1855. That's a pretty basic fact, but it might slip by the casual reader. And there were many more like it sprinkled throughout the text. More obvious was a later mistake in which the author contradicts himself. A mobster (Red Italiano, for those keeping score) is stated to have fled to Sicily when the feds were closing in, then later retired to New Orleans. But several pages later, the author states that Italiano fled to Mexico and there lived out the rest of his life. I don't know which is correct, but shouldn't the author? For the reasons above, this book was a major disappointment. Even worse is that since the topic is of limited commercial appeal, it will probably be the final say on the subject for years to come. By the time anyone else tries to revisit the tale, the major and minor players may have all passed away and the real history will be irretrievably lost. The bloody, intriguing, and still partially covered-up story of Tampa's colorful past deserves better than this.

Rating:
Summary: As a native of Tampa, my knowledge of the Mafia was little..
Review: And this book helped me to better understand the Tampa Mob, however the book lacks details, rather is mostly a summary of the Mob in Tampa.

Rating:
Summary: Astutely researched and engagingly written
Review: Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History Of The Tampa Underworld by Scott M. Deitche is the lively history of Tampa Florida's bootleggers, gambling ringleaders, murderers, drug dealers, and other shady characters who proliferated during the Prohibition era and meshed together to create the seedy character of Tampa's criminal underworld in the multi-ethnic community of Ybor City -- that part of Tampa known locally as Little Havana. Astutely researched and engagingly written, Cigar City Mafia is matter-of-fact in its presentation of truly vicious individuals and their indelible stamp on the history of one American city. Cigar City Mafia is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the history of American organized crime.

Rating:
Summary: "If I told you... we'd both be dead."
Review: From the blood-stained Mercury on the cover, to the police-blotter's list of the 'usual suspects' at the end, you know immediately that THIS IS NOT A NOVEL. With all the detail and staccato of Walter Winchell reading you the Police Gazette comes a tour of Tampa's millennium of mobsters - this powerful first effort to profile all the players, all the made-guys, and even a few innocent bystanders of "Tampa's underworld" heretofore swept under the carpet. A piercing review of a parade of characters and their sometimes anecdotal anarchy, set in timelessness and the tiny town of Tampa. A microcosm of Mafia schemers and their plots, ploys and payoffs; prosecutorial passes, and presidential "whackings." From turn-of-the-century "Little Havana" gambling halls and a numbers racket called "bolita" ran crooked games to fund favored politico and policemen. To the smugglers, bootleggers, loan-sharks and their hitmen of Tampa's "Era of Blood" - daylight point-blank shotgun "hits" of rivals fighting for control of bolita bars throughout the barrio. There's the "bodyguard" nick-named "Scarface" who owned the "Boston Bar" where "Omerta" ruled the road, and those who were even thought to be a rat were found in the river or the bay, in an oil drum, or never found at all. And the eventual and inevitable rise of Santo Trafficante Jr. as one of the world's most powerful international gambling-smuggling mobsters in history. The true "Teflon Don" who never went "up the river" but did end up residing in a mausoleum in the L'Unione Italiana cemetery just blocks from the little Latin Quarter. His funeral attended by all the local notoriety except one: his brother in-crime Henry, as a decades-long feud between them over the family business exceeded even death. This is not fiction, it is TRUE CRIME. Researched from libraries, referenced with archived newspaper articles, and from interviews of law enforcement officers - only they will talk about it... because as one Tampa official put it, "If I told you..., we'd both be dead." Tampa Historian GARY MORMINO says, "Don't expect the Tampa Chamber of Commerce to recommend this book" for more than one reason I suspect. And that's reason enough for me to read it twice.

Rating:
Summary: "If I told you... we'd both be dead."
Review: From the blood-stained Mercury on the cover, to the police-blotter's list of the `usual suspects' at the end, you know immediately that THIS IS NOT A NOVEL. With all the detail and staccato of Walter Winchell reading you the Police Gazette comes a tour of Tampa's millennium of mobsters - this powerful first effort to profile all the players, all the made-guys, and even a few innocent bystanders of "Tampa's underworld" heretofore swept under the carpet. A piercing review of a parade of characters and their sometimes anecdotal anarchy, set in timelessness and the tiny town of Tampa. A microcosm of Mafia schemers and their plots, ploys and payoffs; prosecutorial passes, and presidential "whackings." From turn-of-the-century "Little Havana" gambling halls and a numbers racket called "bolita" ran crooked games to fund favored politico and policemen. To the smugglers, bootleggers, loan-sharks and their hitmen of Tampa's "Era of Blood" - daylight point-blank shotgun "hits" of rivals fighting for control of bolita bars throughout the barrio. There's the "bodyguard" nick-named "Scarface" who owned the "Boston Bar" where "Omerta" ruled the road, and those who were even thought to be a rat were found in the river or the bay, in an oil drum, or never found at all. And the eventual and inevitable rise of Santo Trafficante Jr. as one of the world's most powerful international gambling-smuggling mobsters in history. The true "Teflon Don" who never went "up the river" but did end up residing in a mausoleum in the L'Unione Italiana cemetery just blocks from the little Latin Quarter. His funeral attended by all the local notoriety except one: his brother in-crime Henry, as a decades-long feud between them over the family business exceeded even death. This is not fiction, it is TRUE CRIME. Researched from libraries, referenced with archived newspaper articles, and from interviews of law enforcement officers - only they will talk about it... because as one Tampa official put it, "If I told you..., we'd both be dead." Tampa Historian GARY MORMINO says, "Don't expect the Tampa Chamber of Commerce to recommend this book" for more than one reason I suspect. And that's reason enough for me to read it twice.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not well researched
Review: I bought this book to learn more about the history of Tampa(where I was born and raised). I found it interesting and entertaining. When discussing the book with members fo my family and others I know that grew up and lived during the times, pointed out mainy flaws and discrepincies that the author didn't not bother to double check his sources.

Rating:
Summary: Hoboken Hobo Fails to Describe the True Tampa Underworld
Review: This was a very disappointing description of Tampa's more colorful characters that were often protrayed as poor marksmen who couldn't hit water if they stood in the ocean. Who is this guy from New Jersey thinking he can write about Tampa? I have some serious concerns with the sloppy construction of this book by a publisher who probably couldn't get a loan from Freddie Flim-Flam to print anything else. If you are going to diss our town Deitche, at least get your facts straight. This is a lazy accumulation newspaper stories and rumors. Nothing new and a whole lot missing. Who is going to really talk with a Jersey transplant anyway?