I recently discovered that I could use the online version of my Kindle on my work computer and so now any dead time not spent raiding our common kitchen for snacks has been put to good use, knocking out my holiday reading list. Being so New York-centric, No Haven by author Paul Blakey intrigued me, given that on the surface, it had several things going for it. While not being set in the Big Apple, New Haven, Connecticut is close enough that I figured maybe some of gangland’s usual suspects could make an appearance to provide some level of familiarity, while still technically learning a new geography and reading about a mostly fresh set of characters. Seeing Ralph “Whitey” Tropiano featured prominently on the book cover particularly piqued my interest. Tropiano, a wiseguy in the Colombo Family, was someone I wanted to write about a while ago during my garbage phase, but one I never got around to. I was pleased to see that seemingly all the hard work was already done for me, and I could read his biography at my leisure, instead of being the one to craft it. Finally, the author’s credentials looked promising given I usually rail against journalistic hacks trying to make a quick buck by publishing lazily researched books. I figured that if Paul could strike a balance between crafting an accessible narrative while maintaining academic rigour, it would be exactly the type of book that I look and advocate for. With all these checkmarks ticked off, it was all the more painful when I couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment after finishing the last page. For now, let’s start with the positives.

Centering the book on three main mobsters: Genovese soldier Salvatore “Midge Renaut” Annunziato, the aforementioned Colombo mobster Ralph “Whitey” Tropiano, and Patriarca underboss William “The Wild Guy” Grasso was a great narrative choice. Obviously, there was not enough to fill a book about any one of those individuals, but when brought together, it made for a captivating story about the rise and falls, alliances and betrayals, the changes and ultimate endurance of the Mafia that mirrored the history of the very city those rouges called home to. Just as organized crime adapted to the times and had to constantly reinvent itself through the personification of those three characters (and others), so did New Haven itself, and that made for very clever and compelling storytelling. Though some may consider it filler content, I actually found the background history of New Haven provided in the introduction, the chapter focused on law enforcement as well as some of the social and environmental justice pieces to be very well done and certainly rounded out and gave context to the stomping ground those gangsters found themselves in. At its core, this was a story about New Haven, and it was only right that it is treated as a character unto itself. Paul’s background as a journalist worked as a strength in this case and he succeeded in this not being a mere academic recount, but something more fulsome.  

Compelling characters help make for interesting stories, and Paul’s life was made just that much easier given that Annunziato, Tropiano, and Grasso led exciting lives. From union and industry racketeering to run-ins with questionable police tactics, tapping the Federal funds faucet, and intra and inter-family political manoeuvres, the experiences of the main trio and their supporting cast made it so that I finished reading this book in just a couple of sessions. At the end of it, I found it quite ironic that despite having three completely different approaches to organized crime, all met the same predictable end. Makes one think of Karr’s words. 

Something absent in more casual efforts, this book actually had proper citations and endnotes. So many times, I would read other books where some outlandish facts or claims were made that made me sit back and scratch the back of my head wondering where they were getting their stuff from. Needless to say, my scalp is quite irritated at this point. Luckily, further dandruff production was kept to a minimum during the making of this review since every fact is properly sourced. I put Kindle’s ability to jump back and forth between the main text and the endnotes to great use and found that function to be super handy. Unfortunately, it was in the endnotes section where the book’s problems became apparent.

Already sketched out by some of the history being told, I rolled my eyes when I saw The New York Mafia’s Frank Piccolo regime leadership chart being cited in the endnotes. Simply speaking, the author placed his trust in the wrong sources and ended up quoting books like Carl Sifakis’s The Mafia Encyclopedia or Murder Inc. by Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder, which are quite outdated or have been otherwise debunked by modern scholarship. I scrunched my face like I had just swallowed a spoonful of vinegar when I saw a professor of criminal justice writing that Salvatore Maranzano created the Five Families (Page 27). What made this error in judgment all the more puzzling was that the book’s endnotes featured David Critchley’s The Origin of Organized Crime in America and the author was clearly aware of Informer’s journals. Those sources clearly debunk the many myths that found their way into this manuscript about the origin of the Mafia in America, and other scholarship such as Alan A. Block’s helped put to rest the matters of Murder Inc. I know I sound like a broken record (especially if you recently read my Mafia Takedown review), but I guess I will have to keep repeating this until they stop showing up in books. It is one thing for “journalists” and corporate 9-to-5’ers moonlighting as Mafia authors to get it wrong, but in my opinion, it is unforgivable for a professor and an academic who is supposed to expand our body of knowledge. Yet therein lies the other big problem. I just spent ~200 words writing about New York-centric Mafia myths, which should give you an indication of how much New York content made its way into a story seemingly about New Haven, Connecticut. As I mentioned in the very beginning, I, for once, tried to not read about NYC.

I’m not sure if Paul was struggling to hit a contractual word count, but there were large chunks of the text that were not centered on Connecticut at all or really had anything to do with it. It was one thing when the story concerned itself with Tropiano’s Brooklyn upbringing, and the deep dive into New England was somewhat warranted given Grasso’s position in the administration. But wasting time on things like the background of the machinations in the Genovese Family that had basically zero impact on Annunziato’s largely independent operation or anecdotes on how Carmine Persico acquired his nickname seemed very irrelevant and took focus away from the three central characters. Instead of this filler, I’m sure the author could have expanded on things like Tropiano’s garbage association just to name one. I don’t have all the answers, but anything other than another New York retelling.

No Haven was at its best when author Paul Bleakley stuck to Connecticut’s local history, drawing on the mobsters’ FBI files and other sources to deliver a grounded tale of the transformation of New Haven from a place once inhabited by Indigenous people to becoming the playground of three Mafiosi locked in a struggle for dominance full of drama and intrigue. For me, the book fell apart when the author zoomed out and started talking about mob history and events in New York that had a tangential (at best) connection to the main characters, and at worst, the filler used to pad out the word count that was laced with myths and falsehoods which stubbornly refuse to die. I’d check out Christopher Hoffman’s series of articles on this topic published by the New Haven Independent first, and if you are still interested in more, then give this book a try.