Login / Register
Criminal Element
  • Read
    • Excerpts
    • Reviews
  • Author Spotlight
    • Essays
    • Interviews
  • On-Screen
    • Television
    • Film
    • Trailers
  • Weekly Features
    • This Week’s New Reads
    • GIFnotes
    • Pick Your Poison
    • Cooking the Books
    • True Crime Thursday
    • Perp Derp
  • Cozy Corner
  • Newsletter
  • Login / Register

Mob

5 New York Gangster Nightclubs

By Michael Cannell

October 1, 2020

When Prohibition shut off the taps on January 17, 1920, everything changed. The roaring twenties came on “with a bang of bad booze, flappers with bar legs, jangled morals and wild weekends,” the singer Hoagy Carmichael said. For mobsters, the explosion of speakeasies and illicit nightclubs was an unexpected windfall. Men who had scrabbled for…

Drugs Wars & the Legacy of Apartheid in Cape Town by Niko Vorobyov

By Niko Vorobyov

August 25, 2020

Table Mountain towers over the skyline of Cape Town like a monolith. When the Dutch settlers first arrived here in 1652 they contemplated digging a canal around the cape into an island, separating their colony from ‘Darkest Africa’. The city itself isn’t actually that big: you can comfortably walk from one side to the other…

“Cooking for the Mob” by Niko Vorobyov, author of Dopeworld

By Niko Vorobyov

August 17, 2020

An hour’s bus ride from Serbia’s capital Belgrade lies Novi Sad, Vojvodina. Unlike the capital’s brutalist, graffiti-covered apartment blocks, Novi Sad’s got a more baroque look thanks to its history as part of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. There, as the sun set over a gothic church on the main square I walked into a café…

The Don Con by Richard Armstrong

The Don Con: New Excerpt

By Richard Armstrong

In Richard Armstrong’s The Don Con, Joey Volpe is a bit of a has-been. He’s broke and unemployed after his short-lived appearance on The Sopranos, and his life only gets worse when a real mobster shows up in his autograph line and makes him an offer he can’t refuse.  “So how much cash is a star’s…

Hollywood Godfather by Gianni Russo with Patrick Picciarelli

Book Review: Hollywood Godfather by Gianni Russo

By Larry Clow

April 1, 2019

Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo’s glamorous over-the-top reflection on his time—both real-life and on-screen—spent with the Italian mob in the 1980s.  Gianni Russo’s memoir, Hollywood Godfather, opens with a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a Martin Scorsese movie. It’s the mid-1980s and Russo is the owner of an exclusive Las Vegas nightclub. What…

Handsome Johnny: New Excerpt

By Lee Server

Handsome Johnny from New York Times bestselling author Lee Server is a look at the life of the legendary mobster Johnny Rosselli who was at the center of the century’s darkest secrets: an untold story of golden age Hollywood, modern Las Vegas, JFK-era scandal and international intrigue. Johnny Rosselli is a singular figure in the annals of…

Accidental Research … Into the Mob

By Alan Hruska

I write books, mostly thrillers. But earlier, and for many years, I tried civil cases, large and small, of almost every variety. I never thought of it as research for writing, but of course, it was. I also never thought that any of it—being almost entirely civil not criminal—would lead me into Mafia territory, much…

Citizen Soprano: Why the HBO Series Can Never Be Replicated

By Peter Foy

August 15, 2016

It’s been nearly a decade since The Sopranos concluded. On June 10, 2007, HBO aired “Made in America,” the final episode of David Chase’s gangster opus, and it was met with both rage and befuddlement from millions of viewers—but the show’s last scene has certainly expanded in clarity in the 9 years since. It’s more…

Bloodline by Warren Murphy

Bloodline: New Excerpt

By Warren Murphy

November 4, 2015

Bloodlineby Warren Murphy is a gritty historical novel about the Mafia in 1920s New York City (available November 10, 2015). The Falcones are an immigrant family living in New York City in 1920. Their patriarch, Tony, is a respected policeman. His sons, Tommy and Mario, both served in the Great War and are now upstanding…

The Year of Fear: New Excerpt

By Joe Urschel

September 5, 2015

The Year of Fear by Joe Urshel is a true-crime recap of the thrilling manhunt for Machine Gun Kelly (available September 8, 2015). It's 1933 and Prohibition has given rise to the American gangster—now infamous names like Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. Bank robberies at gunpoint are commonplace and kidnapping for ransom is the…

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 7
  • Next Page »
  • About
  • Advertise With Us
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Notice
  • Contact Us
Site Powered by Supadu