Greg B. Smith

Across the river from the infamous Five Families is the state of New Jersey. In Jersey, land of the Pine Barrens and the legends of a cryptozoological creature that inhabits those wildernesses is a little known chapter of American Cosa Nostra history. In 2003 journalist Greg B. Smith attempted to capture the DeCavalcante crime family, New Jersey's only independent Mafia family.

Taken as a whole, while the book is dramatically lacking, Smith's work is of keen interest to any Mafia buff or organized crime aficionado. Made Men: The True Rise and Fall Story of a New Jersey Mob Family, however, abandons its title from almost its first pages. Made Men is nearly entirely based on the transcripts of Ralphie Guarino's wired escapades as an FBI informant and mid-level associate of the Elizabeth, New Jersey-based DeCavalcantes. Guarino was so good at his new found informant career that he came very close to being inducted as a member of the family - becoming a "made man". For the most part the work neglects the early history of the DeCavalcantes and its namesake boss, Sam "The Plumber" DeCavalcante. The majority of Smith's narrative is solely focused on the period between 1998-2001 which coincides with Guarino's time as an informant, and the arrests of his associates.

If Smith's Made Men is considered as a tale of a small part of the history of the northern New Jersey crime family, then it does lay out a well-told story, despite a bit of tendency by the writer toward repetitiveness. Made Men is a sometimes brilliant look at that short period of DeCavalcante history. But it fails on too many other levels for it to be considered on those laurels alone. Aside from the aforementioned limited chronology, Smith makes too many basic errors in introductory Cosa Nostra knowledge to be taken too seriously. Any Mafia author who refers to the RICO Act as the "Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Order Act"* should be questioned by even a novice organized crime scholar.

What is Smith's only real shining moment is found in the parallels he draws between the real-life DeCavalcantes and HBO's fictional series The Sopranos. Two of Smith's chapters show intriguing evidence that the DeCavalcantes influence on David Chase's series was not merely a figment of the gangsters' imaginations. He speculates that Chase had a source within either the mob or law enforcement that tipped the show to organized crime schemes that had never been revealed to the public. (Neither would be surprising, more than one actor in The Sopranos had known connections. For instance, Tony Sirico was a Colombo Family associate during the 1970s).

Drawing on The Sopranos theme, Smith digresses into other Hollywood-mob stories. "Art imitating life imitating art" Smith remarks concerning late-actor Jerry Orbach's known meetings with reputed mobster Joey "Crazy Joey" Gallo surrounding research for his work on the 1971 film The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight. Orbach approached Gallo for a crash course on gangster behavior and mannerisms. Gallo duly showed the actor the gangster speech and gangster swagger, all of which he picked up from the classic mobster films that he loved to imitate.

Smith's Made Men is one of the few works singularly focused on the DeCavalcante family and it does manage to partially succeed. It covers a three year period of the family's history and attempts to entice the reader with what is, in the end, a decent narrative. However, its failings are too numerous to overlook. From its lack of an index (at least in the paperback edition), to its basic factual errors, to its poorly cited text, the book has too much wrong with it for it to be given any kind of full endorsement. If you're interested in The Sopranos, the DeCavalcantes or the mob in general, you should add Made Men to your reading list, but don't set your expectations too high. Indeed, if you're seeking a survey course on the Mafia there are far better places to look than Made Men

*RICO stands for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act… (meer)