Bloodlines: The Rise and Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Bloodlines gives us a fascinating look at the Sicilian crime
organization known as Caruana-Cuntrera and at the various law
enforcement agencies, including the RCMP, thath brought down some of its
most prominent members in the 1990s. In exploring the way the
organization’s complex operations—particularly its money-laundering
and political corruption schemes—were run, the authors expose a global
network with ties to the highest echelons of political and financial
power. As the authors note, “[u]sing a blend of traditional mafia
values and modern technologies, the Caruana-Cuntrera organization has,
over a century, become an almost perfect criminal enterprise.”

The book’s sprawling narrative has a dauntingly large cast of
characters. A family tree is provided, along with a world map showing
some of the relevant geographic links, but the scope of the work makes
it easy to lose track of the essentials and miss the specific relevance
of more minor figures and their activities. Further, without a highly
placed insider available to proffer the compelling minutiae of daily
operations within the organization, the story is largely dependent on
police surveillance reports, which offer relatively little about the
organization’s inner workings or the nature of its ruling
personalities. Therefore, those reading the book for lurid entertainment
are apt to be disappointed. However, its central thesis—that the
globalized nature of this phenomenon is something to worry about—is
fiercely compelling: “There are Mafia families working with Eastern
European organized crime groups; there are Triads working with
motorcycle gangs; there are Colombian cartels working with Yakuza cells.
They operate in every country where there’s a ‘client’ market for
their goods and services.”

Also fascinating are the book’s revelations about the
organization’s links to those in positions of (ostensibly legitimate)
power; these include the criminal ties of a former Liberal cabinet
minister, and an international banker who counted Richard Nixon and a
former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury among his friends.