by Tom Folsom
First published 2009
Joey Gallo sits in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, reading Camus between planning hits on rival crime families. He and his brothers Larry and Kid Blast have declared war on their own Mafia bosses, breaking the sacred rules of the Cosa Nostra. The three Brooklyn gangsters from Red Hook refuse to serve their Don quietly like other low-level soldiers. Joey immerses himself in beatnik culture, writing poetry and befriending artists while orchestrating violent campaigns against established crime families. The NYPD calls the Gallos the toughest gang in the city. Bob Dylan will later celebrate Joey as the "king of the streets" in an eleven-minute ballad. Cultural figures embrace him as a real-life antihero. But the brothers' rebellion against the powerful crime syndicate comes with a deadly price. Their war escalates through the streets of New York until it reaches its violent conclusion in Little Italy, where Joey meets his fate over a plate of spaghetti in 1972.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, crime
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: antihero, enemies-to-lovers, rebellion
Setting: Greenwich Village, Little Italy, New York, Red Hook
Period: 1972
256 pages · Hardcover · Weinstein Books
Content warnings: violence