This book was not originally on my radar, and it wasn’t until the author reached out to me that I took notice. This was a good thing because when I first looked at the cover, it seemed like one of those cheesy fiction Mafia books. Mafia Confessions, however, is a true story based on the lived experiences of Guisseppe “Joseph” Parisi, a Calabrian immigrant involved in the bootlegging racket of Springfield, Massachusetts. As the cover suggests, Parisi was involved in the murder of Carlo Siniscalchi, the “King of Bootleggers” in Springfield proper, and the book revolves around the intrigues that led up to the event and the subsequent trial. There is a lot to like about the book, but there are a few short comings and small tweaks that I thought could make it that much better.

Among the most compelling things going for this book is that it largely relies on the diaries and journals of the subject at hand, Joseph Parisi, augmented by trial transcripts and contemporary newspaper accounts. For an area of study that is veiled in secrecy, getting one’s hands on a primary source like that is pretty awesome. Parisi in his diaries goes into painstaking detail of his thoughts, emotions, and reflections on Siniscalchi, his murder, the gang war that followed and the atmosphere of the trial. One thing that surprised me was Parisi’s fear of prison and having to spend time in it. Maybe a post-RICO world has perverted my world view, but when you see a seven year sentence imposed on a mobster these days, I think to myself, “Hmm… That doesn’t seem too bad…Could’ve been a lot worse.” By the end, I think we get a really good insight into what was going on in Parisi’s mind at the time, and really peel back the curtain on the emotional side of a high-level Italian criminal. With that being said, while extremely beneficial, primary sources do have their own shortcomings, and I’ll talk about it in a bit.

Springfield, although a hotbed of criminal activity up until today, has largely gone under the radar for organized crime literature and this book helps fill in that void. Focused on the Prohibition-era, the book shines a light on the earliest Italian-American criminal groups active in the city and helps bridge the gap between the Albano gang of the 1910s and the modern Genovese Crime Family. I like how the book stressed familial connections, heritage, and ethnicity as the building block that underpinned the two rival factions. “Mafia Families” were actual families, consisting of in-laws or cousins at best, and as such murders and revenge were felt deeply by all. I think anyone interested in Prohibition-era gangland, Springfield, or the early formation of the Italian-American organized crime phenomenon (or all three!) will get their itch scratched by this book.

When I said that this book is about the “lived experiences” of Joseph Parisi, I chose those words deliberately. You can’t really call this book a biography or a complete life story of Guiseppe. Instead, this book is on Parisi’s murder trial of Siniscalchi. This is not a knock on the book, as the trial was covered in great detail and I thought the author executed (no pun intended) the emotional side of it well. Strangely, I kept thinking of The Shawshank Redemption as I read this book as the audience are kind of meant to root for Parisi, even though he was a criminal himself. It is clear why Guiseppe would not want to go into great detail about his own criminal enterprise, but I found it disappointing that we didn’t get to learn how Joseph got into the bootleg racket and how he rose to lead his own gang. We essentially go from a young men escaping the poverty and misery of Southern Italy to an established criminal in West Springfield fighting over alcohol transactions with a rival faction across the Connecticut River.

My other major gripe with the book is regarding the “Mafia” itself. The book is titled “Mafia Confessions” and the Amazon page for it is littered with that particular word. And yet, we never actually find out if Joseph Parisi was part of the Mafia, be it Sicilian or any other one. For that matter, we don’t know if Carlo was part of one either. Really, the only known Mafia figures show up at the end of the tale in the form of the Miranda brothers. Unfortunately, in his journals Joseph never wrote down which, if any, secret society he was part of and the author never interjects to give his own educated guess based on the evidence they compiled while researching and writing this book. The strength of evidence as to whether Joseph Parisi was part of or knew of the Mafia also depends on the way his journals are recounted and incorporated into the text. You see, Parisi’s diaries are almost never quoted directly and instead form the basis of the first person narrative found in the book. Sometimes jarringly, I presume Joseph is writing in the third person when adding context to events and in other instances it seems it is Nick the author that is writing in the third person. It is also possible that Joseph wrote in the first person exclusively, while Nick himself wrote all the third person passages (although that would make certain paragraphs read weird in retrospect). Maybe it is just my lack of reading comprehension skills, but I found it pretty confusing at times.

The first-person text that was exclusively written by Joseph Parisi is laced with Mafia-charged language. Phrases like “friend of mine”, the explicit distinction between friends and associates and the use of “button-man” all evoke a certain connotation. Perhaps I’m reading into it, but it is certainly interesting… At another point it seems Parisi wrote in his journal about the ‘Ndrangheta and wrote the word “mafia”. I could be mistaken, of course, and it might have been an insert by the author, but Joseph writing that would certainly add the possibility that he was part of one of those societies. A clear distinction between what Joseph Parisi wrote (perhaps in italicised font) and when and what Nick has added himself would be most beneficial to clear up any confusion. On the back of that, while the bibliography was helpful, direct footnotes/endnotes would have been more valuable to trace where certain quotes came from. A newspaper at one point declared that Parisi was a leader of the Camorra in West Springfield. His chief rival Carlo was said to be connected to the Camorra of Navy Street in Brooklyn. Both were accused of being part of the “Black Hand” (although not a synonym for the Mafia, perhaps a reference to one of the numerous secret societies that were rife in the early 20^th century). The Parisi family was close to the Pugliano family, a name that rang out in gangland in the 1990s when Frank and Louis Pugliano of West Springfield were arrested alongside members of the Patriarca Crime Family. I know it is extremely difficult to pinpoint membership in those early periods, but I feel like a bit more research into archives compiled by Federal agencies (such as the Secret Service which surveilled Mafia figures quite aggressively at the time) might have been beneficial. Maybe the author did do that, I’m not sure, but I would have been interested in his opinion on the matter.

Overall, Mafia Confessions is an interesting book on Joseph Parisi, an Italian criminal who indirectly helped cement Genovese control over Springfield, Massachusetts. It is a story of racketeering, vendettas, and corruption.  It is also the story of successful assimilation, as the young immigrant started a business, got rid of his competition, and largely got a way with it to live out the American Dream.

You can find out more about this book on Nick Parisi’s website and I encourage you to check out his interview with Justin Cascio. Apparently, this is the first book in a trilogy covering Springfield to the present day and some of the questions I raised will be answered…