Blood Brothers: How Canada's Most Powerful Mafia Family Runs Its Business

Aluin Gilchrist is a Vancouver-based Canadian government civil
litigation lawyer.

This book’s bibliography lists eight books published in Canada since
1980 about the Canadian Mafia, and a bookcase full about the Mafia as a
whole, including the incomparable Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese, who
writes almost as a friend of the Bonanno crime family.

In Blood Brothers, Edwards writes as reporters are trained to write,
without any delicate concern for the feelings of the evildoers. (He is
the labor reporter for the Toronto Star.) You will find that Edwards’s
insistent hostility to criminals makes you care less for what the Mafia
actually does—his is a less seductive imagery. The “from the
inside” books, like Talese’s, may be more gripping, but they pander
to readers’ corrupt interests. Edwards is more forthright. If Hamilton
mobster John Papalia calls Edwards a “parasite,” it reinforces the
idea that this author is a crime-fighter, not the Mafia buff.

Edwards tells the truth. Mobsters have little freedom to act, their
work is distasteful, and they get few “thrills.” Crime families
should command our attention, not our respect.