Cosa Nostra News

The Mafia and the Gays by Phillip Crawford Jr., the Friends of Ours blogger , is available at Amazon either as a Kindle e-book for $2.99 or a trade paperback for $9.95. The Friends of Our blog is a must-read for anyone interested in crime -- it offers a comprehensive focus on criminal activity impacting America, including but not limited to traditional organized crime, including the various Mafia grows that expanded beyond Italy. Since 2009, Philip has blogged about organized crime at Friends of Ours . He is the leading authority on the Mafia's historical role in gay bars and has been cited as a major resource in numerous books, foremost among them Alex Horts's The Mob and the City and John Strausbaugh's The Village.

Corsican mobster Jean-Luc Germani, France's most wanted man , was arrested Thursday by Paris police. Branded the last of the Corsican godfathers by French media, Germani, on the lam for three years, was arrested when a detective in the midst of tailing another man recognized him, despite a drastic change in appearance (he'd put on weight and grown his hair long; he was also wearing a baseball cap and eyeglasses). Last Corsican Godfather  Germani was charged with threatening police officers with a firearm outside his trailer in 2011, according to AFP . The 49-year-old Germani was previously wanted for the 2008 murder of Jean-Claude Colonna, a cousin of former Corsican godfather Jean-Jé Colonna, who died in a mysterious car accident in 2006. Germani was charged and jailed in 2009 but eventually freed.

C. Alex Hortis spoke with us recently about his new book  The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York . We'd say that it certainly sets the benchmark for books about the early history of the Mafia in New York. He answers with lucid reasoning based on fact festering questions long victimized by speculation. Why for instance did the transitional handoff of the reins of organized crime stop with the Italians? Organized crime throughout history was dominated by different ethnicities -- the Irish, the Jews -- but once the Italians gained dominance, they formed an American Cosa Nostra and have controlled it ever since. No other ethnic group ever usurped the Mafia. Plenty of candidates were put forth by the media: the Jamaican Posses, the Russians, the Albanians. But the only true "mafia" in America is the Italian Mafia. Why is that?  Hortis's answer is convincing. (Unless you've read his book, the answer you think is correct ...