The Sacco Gang

May 21, 2018
Camilleri, best known for his popular Inspector Montalbano mysteries, offers a vivid historical novel based on the true story of the five Sacco brothers who fought the violence of the Mafia, the treachery of the fascists, and the corruption of the police and courts in 1920s Sicily. The Saccos are socialists whose successful farms and businesses attract extortion threats from the Mafia, resulting in escalating violence when the Saccos refuse to pay. Robbery, arson, ambush, murder, and false criminal charges plague the Saccos—until they decide to counterattack. Several Mafia bosses are shot and the corrupt police blame the Saccos. The townsfolk side with the Saccos, but that positive momentum evaporates when the fascists declare the Saccos a bandit gang. The brothers become fugitives from the police, Mafia, and fascists, and cannot trust anyone. Betrayal is a constant companion, and tragedy and injustice are the only possible outcomes. This is a riveting story of how organized crime, political corruption, and judicial duplicity can oppress freedom.

July 1, 2018

Camilleri, author of the internationally beloved, Sicily-set "Inspector Montalbano" series, here tells the story of the infamous Sacco Gang in this stand-alone historical. The Sacco family--primarily composed of brothers Vincenzo, Salvatore, Giovanni, Girolamo, and Alphonzo--has an unearned reputation for troublemaking, extortion, and murder. Their father built a successful farm on luck and hard work and as the sons expand his businesses, they run afoul of the local mafia. The family's socialist views also make them targets of an increasingly powerful Fascist Party in 1920s Italy. Taking on both the police and the mafia, they attempt to stand up for their own rights and the rights of their neighbors. Offering a straightforward and unromantic account of escalating violence in the Sicilian countryside, the author depicts the unrelenting terror of shoot-outs, ambushes, and assaults. VERDICT Based on historical events, Camilleri's latest is not light reading for the armchair traveler, but instead a realistic representation of a region dominated by organized crime and a corrupt justice system in the first half of the 20th century.--Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2018
An Italian family goes from poverty to prosperity and then to infamy in this brisk account of the persecution the Mafia brought to 1920s Italy, based on a true story.Luigi Sacco is a day laborer in rural Raffadali who, by dint of his brains, hard work, and wish to make a family with the woman he loves, becomes a prosperous landowner with a large family. The Saccos are socialists, so all their advancements are done with an eye toward bettering the lots of those around them. When his son, Giovanni, sees a way to make a profit by replacing the horse-drawn cart that provides the only transportation to the provincial capital with a bus, he goes into partnership with the driver of the cart so as not to put him out of a job. It's not the Saccos' politics that the local Mafia can't abide so much as the money the family is making. Luigi's refusal to accede to extortion results in a decadeslong war, with family members dying, sons having to live as outlaws, and the dissipation of the Saccos' fortune. The local law is of no help, as the Mafia controls the police, judges, and the outcomes of most trials. The story reads like a researched version of a folk legend handed down over generations. The people are not fully developed characters as much as figures standing in for their fates--which is not a criticism but exactly what is to be expected when a story is told in this way. That doesn't keep the reader from longing for a bit more dramatization or, at least, the audiobook, where the right narrator could give this appalling and tragic story the fabulist element it needs.The injustice here has an immediacy; the tale itself feels part of legend.

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