Tin for Sale: My Career in Organized Crime and the NYPD - Hardcover

Manca, John; Cosgrove, Vincent

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068809466X ISBN 13: 9780688094669

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1991

Synopsis

A NYPD detective-turned-wiseguy tells how his plan to escape his family's involvement in the Mafia underworld by joining the New York Police Department backfired when he tried to juggle both worlds to operate deceitful scams

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Reviews

This memoir, rather than glamorizing Mafia figures, lays to rest the myths of the quintessential loving, cohesive and protective Italian-American family on the fringes of New York City organized crime. Manca grew up in a home presided over by a brutal grandfather--one of Lucky Luciano's boys--who beat him regularly while his parents sat by, not daring to interfere. In due course Manca became a police officer and within a few weeks began using his badge as a way to steal, cheat and extort, which he portrays as standard practice in the NYPD of 1954-1963. Dismissed from the force, he worked all sorts of scams as "half a wiseguy," allied with but not a member of the Cosa Nostra. Eventually he was imprisoned, then put in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Written with Cosgrove ( The Hemingway Papers ) the book, oddly, does little for Manca's image: he emerges as a self-indulgent, essentially amoral human being whose only expressed regret at age 60 is that his schemes have failed.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First-person recital by a former New York City detective who was an active felon with Mafia connections. Manca was raised by his grandfather, an old-style ``made'' man. When Frank LoCicero emigrated from Palermo, he reestablished his friendship with Lucky Luciano, and drilled young Manca in omerta--the code of silence--and other mob ethics. At 18, hoping to escape his family destiny, Manca joined the NYPD. Straight life was brief. On his first night in a prowl car, Manca's partner kept stopping to go into a slummy building. Angry that he was being cut out of the action, Manca followed him and found the cop checking up on a whorehouse he ran. Fourteen months later, Manca was promoted to detective with the help of mobster Carmine DeSapio's men in the Department. Finally getting some scope to operate, he put the arm on bookies, sold watered-down affidavits to his arrestees, burglarized Wall Street offices, and mugged pimps--enough action to have a new house, a cherry Buick, racks of hand-tailored suits, and regular trips to Vegas. Flagrant as he was, the brass ignored him- -they were all on the pad, too. He was kicked out of the Department when he and his civilian partner were arrested for stealing multiple Cadillacs; Manca then became a ``half-wise guy,'' sometimes free-lancing, sometimes working with the mob. His first undertaking was playing phony detective to frame an immigrant doctor, putting the squeeze on him for $30,000. Soon, he was flimflamming banks in Queens, and had scammed three Vegas casinos for $200,000 in one weekend. The aesthetic details of Manca's various hustles are given careful (and fascinating) exposition. Caught passing stolen traveler's checks, he was given three years, ratted out the mob, and was placed in the Witness Protection Program, where he earned pin money wearing a wire for the FBI. An engrossing evocation of the pre-Knapp Commission NYPD, the voice of a sociopathic petty hood, and the siren song of greed. A must-have for cop-tale collectors. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Manca, a wannabe wiseguy, needs a scam. Having spent his entire life running one con game after another, he now attempts one on the reading public. His life story, we are told, is in the "tradition" of Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy ( LJ 2/1/86), and supposedly is an exciting look at life on both sides of organized crime. Born into a family with close connections to the Mafia, Manca, for some unknown reason, becomes a New York policeman at a time when almost the entire force was corrupt. Until he was thrown off the force, Manca was a one-man crime wave. After leaving the force, Manca indulged in one scam after another, until he ultimately scammed the FBI. There is nothing new to be learned here, except, perhaps, to be wary of "easy money." Manca is just another hood with a monster ego. Not recommended.
- Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 068809466X
• ISBN 13: 9780688094669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256