The reviewer says “Fans of the Netflix docuseries Fear City, the films Donnie Brasco and The Irishman, or Selwyn Raab’s Five Families will enjoy this insider’s update on of one of the original Italian American crime families.” The full review follows below: In this compulsively readable mix of memoir and true crime, former undercover FBI agent Rocco (a pseudonym the …
Giovanni’s Ring was reviewed by Publishers Weekly on April 12, 2021
Rocco, the alias for a New Jersey cop who infiltrated the Mafia in the 2010s, vividly conveys the challenges and perils of undercover work in this gripping if inadequately sourced memoir. Rocco, the son of a policeman, grew up in Bayonne, N.J., playing with kids whose relatives were in the mob. After he barely graduated from high school, his father’s …
Giovanni’s Ring: My Life Inside the Real Sopranos (Chicago Review Press, June 2021) is slated for review in the May 1, 2021 issue of Booklist. It will go live online on April 29, 2021.
“Giovanni Rocco walked the tightrope of an undercover operative deftly for years, infiltrating the DeCalvacante crime family in New Jersey. Rocco grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, where the presence of organized crime loomed. Despite some minor rabble-rousing in his youth, Rocco avoided going the way of the wiseguy. A career in law enforcement beckoned as an escape, and kept …
Very few undercover agents (UCAs) have been able to successfully infiltrate the inner sanctum of Cosa Nostra. Giovanni Rocco is one of those UCAs
This page-turner is a must read if you want to experience Giovanni’s dangerous and oftentimes violent journey inside the real-life Sopranos.” –Joaquin “Jack” Garcia, retired FBI UCA and author of Making Jack Falcone
This account of Giovanni Rocco’s many years’ work to infiltrate the ranks of the Jersey Mob drips with authenticity and crackles with tension from the first page to the last
But what sets it apart is Rocco’s unflinching honesty concerning the cost of such work to his family, his marriage, and, ultimately, his very soul. You will likely read this at an unbroken gallop, just as I did.” –Les Standiford, author of Bringing Adam Home
Once again truth trumps fiction in this riveting account of an undercover cop from New Jersey burrowing deep into the confidence of mob killers and made-men straight out of Hollywood Central Casting
Giovanni Rocco, himself a product of the streets of Bayonne, risks his marriage and family spying for the FBI on an assignment where a mere slip of the tongue or discovery of his hidden recorders could kill him. From page one of Giovanni’s Ring, the jeopardy is constant, the stakes high, and the prose pure Jersey.” –William C. Rempel, author …
Giovanni Rocco and Doug Schofield tell a terrific, fast-paced story about Giovanni’s undercover penetration of the DeCavalcante crime family
But what makes the book compelling and different than other Mafia tales is the often chilling incidents in which Giovanni found himself close to being exposed by the Mob, and the psychological torment that put him and his family through. Giovanni’s Ring is a great crime story about a man who rose from the streets of New Jersey to help …