Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero

The lackluster latest collaboration between DiMatteo (The President Street Boys), whose father was in the Mafia, and true crime author Benson (The Cigar) traces the history of organized crime in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. The authors begin in 1636, then rush through 250 years of Red Hook history leading up to the early 1900s arrival of Irish gangsters who called themselves the White Hand—so-named for their feud with the established Italian Black Hand. Subsequent chapters provide superficial coverage of the following decades, including the early years of Al Capone, who attended school in Red Hook. Most immediate are the sections covering more recent events, including the experiences of DiMatteo’s father, who worked as the right-hand man to mobster “Crazy” Joey Gallo in the mid-20th century, and DiMatteo’s own recollections of witnessing his first mob hit as a five-year-old in 1961. Elsewhere, hyperbolic assertions and a lack of supporting evidence will test readers’ patience (“There was no place on earth, not even in Italy, where the texture of mob life was so ingrained in the structures and the people and the system” as it was in Red Hook, the authors claim, without offering any follow-up). Those interested in the history of organized crime in New York City would be better served by Selwyn Raab’s Five Families. Agent: Doug Grad, Doug Grad Literary. (Nov.)