The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia

Sal Polisi · Steve Dougherty

Nov 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Pete Simonelli

About this audiobook

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America . . . until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime Family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi. As a member of New York's feared Colombo Family, Polisi ran The Sinatra Club, an illegal after-hours gambling den that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas-Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. But the nonstop thrills of Polisi's criminal glory days abruptly ended when he was busted for drug trafficking. Already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life-a rat. In this shocking, pulse-pounding, and, at times, darkly hilarious first-person chronicle, he paints a never-before-seen picture of a larger-than-life secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists.

Ratings and reviews

Wonderful book, but especially for anyone with an interest in organized crime and the mafia. You get a story well told from the perspective of a not too well-known player during the very interesting time period of the 1970s through the mid-1980s. Polisi appears in some of the legitimate crime documentaries, and his story is one worth hearing. You will not be disappointed. I just wish there had been even more.

About the author

Sal Polisi spent much of his life inside the New York Mafia before he flipped and provided testimony against key Family members. No longer under federal witness protection, he has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York, and Playboy, and has been interviewed by Larry King, Connie Chung, and Matt Lauer.

Coauthor Steve Dougherty is a freelance journalist in New York City.

Pete Simonelli is a writer, narrator, and vocalist for the band Enablers. He lives and works in New York City.