This is the true story of Vito Ciancimino--Don Vito da Corleone, the "Mayor of the Corleones"--who spent forty years in the grip of death, mafia, politics, business deals and the secret service. Don Vito recounts years of clandestine and previously censored contacts between politicians and the mafia--between the Italian State and the Cosa Nostra. The key witness is Massimo, the penultimate and hitherto closest of Don Vito's five children, who has given his personal testament for the first time. His account rewrites some of the most important events of Italy's recent history. If Roberto Saviano's Gomorra revealed the workings of the mafia system from street level, Francesco La Licata and Massimo Ciancimino's Don Vito tells us about the people who held the reins of power.
In the words of Attilio Bolzoni of Republica: "This is the portrait of a man who was a key player from post war Italy to our days in one of the most daunting of Italian affairs, a figure who inspired fear, a devil. He was friend with mafia bosses and great politicians, of killers and respectable gentlemen. Vito Ciancimino was the incarnation of power itself, maybe the most hated and feared, the most suspected and worshipped, man of Palermo and of the whole Sicilian society."
Don Vito, Massimo Ciancimino & Francesco La Licata
I like true crime books that tell me something about the circumstances and motivations for why people get into the situations that they do. I even like confessional true crime as long as it's not too self-serving or overtly engaged in historical rewriting. But I think I've just discovered that the subject, the crimes, the individuals have to be somebody that I have some sort of knowledge of, or connection with. Be it that they are from the same country, city or state as me, or maybe if it's something that is of universal interest. Alas my interest in the Mafia in Italy is very very limited and that really affected by experience with DON VITO.
Written by author Francesco La Licata along with the youngest son of mafia boss Vito, Massimo Ciancimino, DON VITO is the story of a Mafia boss known as the 'Mayor of the Corleones'. Massimo was the son closest to the former politician, the anointed boy for want of a better description, this book is about the people and the events that he was a very close observer of. The book attempts to shed some light on the details of Don Vito's life, his interactions, his contacts and his influence. There's some glimpses into family life with a man who, on the face of it, seemed emotionally withdrawn, stern, a bully to his family. Massimo seems to have had a life which was very much controlled and directed by a cold and stand-offish man with a mother who was mostly off to the side, perhaps thoroughly inhibited by the man she married.
It's not just Massimo's voice however, there are chapters from other viewpoints, including explanatory overviews from La Licata. I'm really not sure if it was these multiple voices, whether it was partly the interwoven names and names and names that kept being thrown into the narrative, or whether it was just that I was struggling for interest, but I just never quite seemed to be able to get who was who and what they were talking about straight in my head. Terminal confusion reigned from the start of the book to the finish and at the end of it, whilst I felt I'd been told a few things about the goings on in the Ciancimino household and their associates, I was really not too sure that I knew much more about the whys of the Mafia's influence and how somebody like Ciancimino, rather than any other of the Mafia hierarchy, in particular, got to where he did. That could very well have been the reader's fault, but I just found I couldn't get a handle on who or what and there didn't seem to be much attempt at why.
Perhaps this book is one more for observers of Mafia happenings, one more for people that really have an interest in the subject matter. Alas for me, DON VITO never quite engaged, never really told me anything in depth, never really peaked any interest in knowing more about the Mafia at all.