Organized Crime on Page and Screen - Portrayals in Hit Novels, Films, and Television Shows

Thanks to writers like Mario Puzo, filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and actors like Al Pacino and James Gandolfini, American and Sicilian Mafia characters are well-known figures in contemporary popular culture. Other powerful organized crime groups appearing in popular media include the Neapolitan Camorra and Mexican drug cartels.
This book takes a close look at all these examples of organized crime by examining the different ways these organizations and their members have been portrayed in many of our most popular novels, movies, and TV series, and how the gangster figure has evolved from its earliest depictions in a trio of Hollywood films in the 1930s up to the present day.

List of contents

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I-Crime Fiction

Italian Mafias and Neapolitan Camorra

Leonardo Sciascia

Andrea Camilleri

Massimo Carlotto

Roberto Saviano

The American Mafia

Mario Puzo

Richard Condon

Laurence Shames

Tod Goldberg

Mexican Drug Cartels

James Carlos Blake

Don Winslow

Part II-Movies and

Movies

Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface

Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather Trilogy

Five Movies by Martin Scorsese

Matteo Garrone: Gomorrah (2009)

Comic Gangster Movies

TV Series

The Sopranos (1999-2007)

Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014)

Peaky Blinders (2013-2022)

Gomorrah: The Series (2014-2021)

Bibliography

Index

About the author

David Geherin, a professor emeritus of English at Eastern Michigan University, is the author of eleven books on crime fiction, four of which were finalists for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Product details

• Authors: David Geherin, David Geherin
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 25.10.2024
• EAN: 9781476693170
• ISBN: 978-1-4766-9317-0
• No. of pages: 233
• Illustrations: Raster,schwarz-weiss
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Photography, film, video, TV; True Crime, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, TRUE CRIME / Organized Crime, Organized crime, Literature: history & criticism, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Literature: history and criticism, Film Theory & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism