Hmm… Where do I even begin? I was excited for this book to come out and the year-long wait was painful to bear.  After all, the Colombo crime family is my favourite organized group to read about and I am quite partial to the era this story takes place in (the late-80s to mid-90s).  John and Andrew Orena, Victor Sr.’s sons, both contributed to its making. It should have been perfect! But then I woke up at 2:58 AM EST on February 25th and quickly glanced at my phone to see if the book was finally available on Kindle. It was. Curious, I searched for keywords to see if the topics I was most excited to see were covered. They weren’t. Frustrated, I turned over and tried to fall asleep. Secretly, I hoped this was all part of some lucid nightmare. The next morning brought with it the realization that it wasn’t, and the thinness of the book was quite real. Shirking my responsibilities at work that day, I laid low and began to read the book stealthily. Given how short it was, it didn’t take me long to finish. I even had a few extra work hours to begin collecting my thoughts. Well, here they are.

This book may be called Little Vic and the Great Mafia War, but there was very little of the former and little new about the latter. It would be more appropriate to say that Andrew Orena was the main character, as the war is largely told through his perspective (with a much smaller contribution coming from John Orena). While Andrew knew a lot about Vic’s personal history and home life, his unmade status hampered his ability to give any differentiated insight into Mafia protocol and the inner workings of the organization. John, on the other hand, was made. Yet, despite “walking away from the Life” and being presently shelved by his crime family, he was clearly uncomfortable sharing any truly inside information, sticking to telling harmless anecdotes about his dad and himself. This lack of focus on the title “character” was best exemplified by the simple fact that Vic Sr.’s pre-1988 “mob career” was summarized in half a chapter. It was a very short chapter, mind you. Yeah, there were some nice stories about his childhood, his attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church (and its stark contrast to that of his wife’s), and his start in the mob. However, Orena Sr. goes from meeting Sebastian Aloi to being made in half a page. The given date of his induction, 1973, is also quite suspect. Unfortunately, there was nothing about Vic’s involvement in Resource Capital Group and the Robert Stone murder, nothing about the beef with Luchese member Frank Manzo, and virtually nothing on my beloved Gasoline Tax Scheme. There wasn’t much on Orena’s interactions within the Colombo family or relations with members from other families pre-Colombo war. There just wasn’t a lot of substance or depth to the book.

The bulk of the book dealt with the Third-Colombo War and the many resulting deaths. It was an adequate summary, I suppose, as we got the context, set-up, and impacts of each murder on the wider course of the conflict. However, I didn’t find myself learning anything new and in fact, many key players such as Joseph Tomasello were completely absent from the narrative. By the time Chapter 23 rolled around, Larry McShane had already wrapped out the war and the legal fallout which resulted in Victor Orena Sr.’s imprisonment for life and the relatively short prison sentences for Victor Orena Jr. and John Orena after they successfully used the Greg Scarpa/ Lindley DeVecchio rouge mafioso-FBI cabal defense to fend off against the main RICO charges. After their victory over the government, Vic Jr. and John (and Andrew) “walked away from the Life” which presumably meant no more mob stories. Thus, with 25% of the book remaining, I wondered what direction the author would go in. Unfortunately, the last quarter of the book became a Lindley DeVecchio legal courtroom drama which I didn’t really care for. It’s not what I signed up to read about. The book was short enough as it was; the precious page count should not be wasted on such distractions.

The book was also badly edited and littered with errors large and small. There were grammar and punctuation mistakes everywhere and it was very clear from the beginning that not much thought went into the editing of the manuscript. There were factual errors as well, such as in the case of Paul Castellano being described as Carlo Gambino’s son-in-law. For a book that short, it was replete with repetition. And not just in the sense that the same ideas or points were repeated (there were plenty of such cases), entire sentences word-for-word were repeated, sometimes twice on the same page! Not to mention how jumpy the narrative was. We’d go from reading about the aftermath of the failed hit on Vic Sr. by Carmine Sessa and team to exploring Joe Profaci’s days as the Olive Oil King (why do we need that again?). It wasn’t a pleasant reading experience.  

Little Vic and the Great Mafia War had few redeeming qualities, if any. The picture section at the back only featured a couple of new photos of the man under the spotlight. While it was nice to hear firsthand quotes and recollections from John and Andrew Orena, in totality they don’t amount to much new information on the inner workings of the Colombos. The wonky and error-prone narrative served largely as a propaganda vehicle used to disseminate an Orena favourable portrayal of the war that absolved Vic Sr.’s responsibility and shifted all sin on the shoulders of Scarpa and DeVecchio. A “Guilt for the Guiltless” Colombo edition if you will.