My friend ordered the book "Godfather of Night" and after I read it, I will tell you how I like it. Here is some info from Amazon.com:
From Publishers Weekly
Reformed gangster Pappas offers a potent, fast-paced memoir: I didn't become a gangster out of greed, money, or to drive fancy cars. I got into it to make a point: To prove my manhood to a father who denied me. That father was Lukie Pappas, head of the biggest Greek crime family in the Southeast. At age 17 the author learned he was Lukie's illegitimate son. He changed his name from Kevin Cunningham to Kevin Lucas Pappas, but still received only a cold denial from Lukie. Angered by the rejection, Pappas began his own criminal life of swindles, drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. As a kingpin in Atlanta, he found the cocaine competition turning ugly: At age 24, he landed in the violent Atlanta federal prison. While serving two consecutive life sentences, Pappas agreed to an FBI offer: freedom in exchange for infiltrating his father's group as an informant: I walked out of prison full of anger and animosity toward my so-called father. Pappas is adapting this high-octane book into a documentary, scheduled for 2010 release. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Aug. 11)
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Product Description
What if you belonged nowhere and to no one? What if you learned as a teenager that the father who had mistreated you for years wasn’t your father at all–and that you were actually born to the mistress of a Greek gangster? And what if the only way to connect with your real father was to become his fiercest rival?
Kevin Cunningham grew up in Tarpon Springs, Florida, just another kid from the wrong side of the tracks. But from his first days, Kevin gravitated toward power, and in Tarpon Springs that meant local crime boss Lukie Pappas. As a boy, Kevin hung out at the Pappas Restaurant, and he saw how the townspeople approached Lukie. How they respected him. How they came to him for help. How they called him nounos–Greek for “godfather.” From the shadows, Kevin admired it all.
When he turned seventeen, Kevin’s world flipped upside down. His dying father confessed that Kevin was the son of another man–and not just any man. He was the son of Lukie Pappas. Suddenly, Kevin’s destiny was clear. His lineage became his fate. His rightful place was beside the Greek godfather who ruled his hometown.
But Lukie coldly rejected him, as both a son and a colleague. Fueled by rage and pride, Kevin claimed the Pappas name as his own and embarked on his own criminal enterprise. From two-bit swindling he rose quickly to high-stakes drug trafficking. Money laundering, gun running, and racketeering polished his underworld résumé, even as they placed him squarely in the cross-hairs of every federal agency with three initials and a most-wanted list. And when he got caught, Kevin’s time behind bars only honed his criminal instinct, hardened his resolve, and cemented his reputation as a larger-than-life outlaw who sometimes went down but could never be taken out.
Still in his early twenties but as powerful as any crime boss, Kevin surrounded himself with an elite group, a posse that called itself the Band of Five. Flush with fast cars, boats, planes, and women, they wanted for nothing, but their antics invited violent attempts to bring Kevin to his senses–or at least to his knees.
More than a gripping tale, Godfather of Night unveils the Greek American crime syndicate and its close alignment to power and takes readers to a dark place where family secrets collide with high-level crime and corruption. Kevin Pappas’s story is a true-crime epic for a new generation of wiseguys–full of the harrowing war stories and hard-won wisdom of a man who lived by his own rules, broke everyone else’s, and dared the world to try to stop him.
UPDATE AUGUST 29, 2009: I READ THIS BOOK IN FOUR DAYS AND I ENJOYED THE WAY HE TOLD HIS LIFE STORY. THERE WAS VERY LITTLE WRITTEN ABOUT THE GREEK MAFIA THOUGH. BASICALLY, IT'S ABOUT A GUY WHO WAS BROUGHT UP LIVING IN A MOSTLY GREEK TOWN IN FLORIDA. EVEN THOUGH HIS MOTHER AND FATHER WERE NON-GREEKS, HE LEARNED THE GREEK LANGUAGE AS WELL AS GREEK DANCING. HE WAS REALLY INTO THE GREEK CULTURE BUT NEVER REALLY KNEW WHY. THEN HE FOUND OUT THAT HIS MOTHER CHEATED AND HIS REAL FATHER WAS A GREEK MOB BOSS THAT WOULD NOT ADMIT THAT HE WAS HIS REAL FATHER. SO, BASICALLY HE BECOMES A BIG TIME COCAINE DEALER IN ATLANTA AFTER STARTING SMALL AT A VERY YOUNG AGE AND GOES THROUGH THIS ROLLER COASTER OF A LIFE. I DON'T WANT TO GIVE ANYTHING AWAY, BUT I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK EVEN THOUGH THERE IS VERY, VERY LITTLE ABOUT GREEK ORGANIZED CRIME IN IT.
