Donnie Brasco is the story of an FBI agent who spent six years infiltrating the Mafia in New York and Florida. If you’ve heard the name Donnie Brasco before, then you likely were either around when it happened in the 1970s-80s or you may have seen the movie that was made in the 1990s of his story starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

Donnie Brasco’s real name is Joe Pistone. He gives the reader some information on his education and background in law enforcement and how the idea of infiltrating the Mafia came about, which was something the FBI had never attempted before, having always been reliant on informants within the Mafia who were playing both sides. Then he gets right into it. The book is an account of story after story of the people he met and worked with, the endless schemes they plotted that sometimes succeeded and other times didn’t, the relationships he forged with mobsters over the course of months and years, learning the rules of the Mafia, and the extreme caution he had to exercise to ensure he was never caught. Not to mention the implications to his family life during his time undercover, and even more so afterwards.

The names of people and places are all given. Nothing is held back and censored. Characters by the name of Sonny Black, Joey Spaghetti, Lefty Ruggiero, Rusty Rastelli, and Boobie Cerasani – real Mafia players with all the stereotypical behavior you would expect (complete with lots of ‘fuhgetaboutits!’). Pistone delivers word-for-word conversations that were secretly recorded, sometimes really long ones. It’s a fascinating tale.

If you like stories about the criminal underground, spycraft, or government secret agents, or are curious at all about the Mafia, you should definitely give Donnie Brasco a read. I haven’t seen the movie, but the book is pretty fantastic. In fact, it was much better than I was expecting, and even though it was a sizable length, I wanted it to keep going when I reached the end. You get a great sense of the characters and culture, what the Mafia is like, what they actually do, and why they’re so dangerous. Highly recommended.