Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire (Abridged)

Seldom has the netherworld of the mafia been revealed with such fascinating detail and sheer suspense. Like the classics of the genre-from The Godfather to The French Connection toWise Guy-Takedown leads us to the inner ring of a conspiracy of corruption and terror that held the city in its grip for nearly fifty years. 

Rick Cowan was a young NYPD detective in 1992 when he dropped by a Brooklyn waterfront warehouse to investigate a recent fire bombing-only one in a string of interviews he considered routine. But what he found there was far from routine, for it would take him on a five-year odyssey and nearly cost him his life. In fact, he had stumbled upon the lead of a lifetime-the suspicion that he might unearth the hard evidence police and federal agencies alike had been chasing for decades: the proof of collusion among the mob families to extort billions from the nation's most influential corporations that call New York their home. 

Featuring eccentric, larger-than-life New York characters and an undercover cop on the brink of being discovered-and murdered-at every step, Takedown is a riveting real-life procedural and one of the most important investigative books of the season.