‘Guy’s entertaining look at underworld

This is one of the more interesting books about the underworld to hit the shelves. Instead of being crafted by a professional writer, like Mario Puzo (“The Godfather”), this offering – a novel – comes from two gents who qualify as insiders.

Bill Bonanno is the son of Joe “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, longtime New York Mafia don. Joe Pistone is a former FBI agent who infiltrated the mob under the personality of Donnie Brasco.

They alternate their versions of the same events in this tale about the old clubs of Little Italy. Bonanno’s version is romanticized, portraying the Mafia as an almost benevolent force in the traditional Italian community. It’s pretty much stuck in the past and only the most naive reader would swallow most of it.

Pistone’s telling seems more realistic, documenting the boredom and frustration of trying to thwart the evil the Mafia has managed to weave into everyday life in places like New York.

The back-and-forth volley on the same sordid world is fresh and entertaining. It’s more than fair to assume that collaborator David Fisher, who keeps things moving, weaved composites of all the situations Bonnanno and Pistone encountered in real life.

And as interesting as those happenstances were, fiction usually is more juicy than any real-life confessional. That’s pretty much what happens here, and it’s worth the time of those who have made all those other chroniclers of mob fiction rich and famous.