Boss of Bosses: The Fall of the Godfather: The FBI and Paul Castellano

In 1981 Paul Castellano, head of New York City's Gambino crime family, was at the height of his power. At age 66 he controlled an empire that dictated to much of the construction and meat businesses, had a major say in the operation of two supermarket chains and was involved in such standard mob enterprises as prostitution, loan sharking, etc. Then FBI agents O'Brien and Kurins set out to stop him. Planting a listening device in Castellano's Staten Island home, they were able to secure enough information to send many of the area's top mafiosi to prison. Castellano, however, was fatally shot, gangland style, on a Manhattan street in 1985, while he was being tried for conspiracy to commit murder and for operating a stolen car ring. Exemplary sleuths, competent writers, the authors recreate a tense, lively tale redolent of high living and lawlessness, full of shrewd observations that break the code of crime-speak, to which these long-suffering snoops were subjected during their electronic surveillance of the mob. First serial to New York magazine; film rights to Warner Brothers. (June)