Recensioni

Review: Mafia Business

Recensione editoriale - Kirkus Reviews

The inner workings of the Mafia have long fascinated outsiders and with good reason: Mafiosos have been painted as mythic heroes, near-legendary, larger-than-life figures. What Arlacchi attempts here is to scale down the myth by the simple expedient of reminding us that these men are criminals. Unfortunately, Arlacchi, a sociologist, has clogged up what should be a riveting read with a plodding, slow style that seems most comfortable when discussing abstractions of behavioral patterns, far less certain when it attempts to deal with these criminals on everyday human terms. Among some of the findings which await fuller treatment from more skilled literary talents: many new mob recruits are not taken from the Southern Italian slums but from Northern Italian universities; there is an interplay between youthful political enthusiasm and a life of crime; and lastly, that the Italian upper classes and the Mafia have close links and interdependencies that help perpetuate both. Mafia Business, however, is as frustrating as the war on crime itself: just when its turgid prose reaches a nadir, up pops a page or, sentence that re-galvanizes the reader's attention. But in the end, it's strictly for serious students of organized crime. Puzo fans, look elsewhere.