Review by Booklist Review
English, a journalist who specializes in writing about organized crime, tracks the tumultuous history of the Corporacion, the name given by the press to the Cuban mob in the U.S. He focuses on José Miguel Battle, Sr., a former Cuban cop who founded the Corporacion in the 1960s after a stint in the CIA. Believing he had been betrayed by JFK he wound up in a Cuban prison during the Bay of Pigs invasion Battle quickly built a criminal empire in the U.S., one that underwent a series of upheavals as other organizations tried to horn in on its business. It's a gripping, blood-soaked story, rich in drama and suspense; if it were a novel, you might expect to see Don Winslow's name attached to it. Fans of true crime, especially those with a hankering for epic-sized stories, should flock to this book, which exposes a side of U.S. criminal history that many readers might not have been aware of (except, of course, via the 1983 movie Scarface). Movie rights have already been sold, with Benicio Del Toro rumored to star.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Voice actor Pabon's fluid narration adds clarity to English's multigenerational true crime saga about the criminal exploits of the Cuban mafia in America in the decades after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The book follows the career of José Miguel Battle, aka El Gordo, who led the Cuban mob to the United States and launched a hugely profitable numbers racket known as the bolita while wreaking havoc on the streets of Union City, N.J., and Miami. Actor Pabon guides listeners through a confusing landscape of characters with sure-footedness and fluency in both English and Spanish. The book contains numerous accounts of vicious crimes committed by rival bolita outfits; Pabon's steady, calm reading voice helps to dial down that violence and allow listeners to stay focused on the larger narrative. Pabon's skillful narration and English's rich story combine to make this a gripping audiobook. A Morrow hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Writer English (Havana Nocturne) has scored gold again, with this latest book that explores Cuban mobsters in America following the exodus after Fidel Castro's revolution. The book centers on the criminal career of José Miguel Battle, a cop under the Batista regime, a Bay of Pigs survivor, and hero to Cuban exiles in the States. Battle was quick to organize the bolita, a form of the Cuban lottery in Union City, NJ. His criminal enterprise grew rapidly into a fully formed mafia, known as the "Corporation," or Compania, which spread across Cuban communities even into south Florida. Havana's version of the Godfather, Battle was a mob boss with far-reaching influence-American law enforcement was aware of his organization, a target of President Reagan's Select Committee on Organized Crime. He served two years in prison on a 30-year murder conviction, pled guilty on racketeering charges in 2006, and was sentenced to 20 years. Battle died in prison in 2007. VERDICT Riveting nonfiction worthy of the best creative storyteller. English's extensive notes and documentation result in a first-rate saga of crime and corruption that is further testament to the author's reputation among the nation's most accomplished writers. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]-Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A stout but fast-moving tale of criminal misdoings from Havana to Manhattan and beyond, courtesy of a Cuban crime boss with a plan.The corporation of the title is not one that Citizens United directly benefits, but it has plenty of political dimensions all the same. This corporation is the Cuban exile version of the Mafia, and its adventures and misadventures might make Don Corleone blanch. At the center of the action is a former police officer who, having fought against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs and logged time as a bagman for corrupt superiors, set up shop in the United States. By English's (Whitey's Payback, 2014, etc.) account, Jos Miguel Battle y Vargas (1929-2007) reshaped the angles of the Cuban addiction to bolita, a simple lottery game, to work the gambling racketand then other vices, including, in time, the trade in cocaine. Still young when he started, he "conveyed leadership through his demeanor and gravitas rather than inspiring rhetoric or brilliant business strategies." The business turned violent, and Battle dealt decisively with his many enemies, one of whom killed his brother; as English writes of two of Battle's soldiers, "they had done so many killings together in the last few months, they hardly needed to talk about it. It was all second nature." Naturally, Battle had it in mind to take revenge on Castro as well as keep his empire afloat. Had the movie not had an earlier model, he might have made a good study for Scarface. Still, as will happen, the Corporation fell apart under the strain of rivalries, power struggles, and legal interference only to be supplanted by other criminal organizations. English capably covers half a century of criminal enterprise, avoiding the clichs of the true-crime genre while stocking his narrative with familiar players: the capos and goons, the cops and informants, a mistress or two, and John F. Kennedy.Add another Mafia to the list (Italian, Irish, Russian), then. Fascinating reading for true-crime buffs. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
