ABOUT Brian Hess

Brian Hess
I have been involved with computers, as a website builder, security specialist, and computer doctor for a number of years. I have earned an Associates Degree in Computer Networking, a Bachelor's Degree in Internet Information Systems, and I am completing my MBA in at this time. One site th More...

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Description

Jailed for something he did not do, Mickey Boy Messina, an associate of the Calabra crime family in New York City, is paroled after six years and must put his life back together. He is caught between a parole officer who wants to catch him consorting with known members of organized crime so that he can return Messina to prison, and Laurel, with whom he falls deeply in love only to find that she hates his way of life. At the same time he is invited to join the Calabra family as a man of rank and is close to discovering who his father is. Written while the author was in prison for racketeering, this first novel vividly portrays the American Mafia, showing how Messina could live in that ambivalent world of violence and honor. Girard captivates the reader with his insider's knowledge but neither romanticizes nor denigrates the Mafia's vast power and wealth. He is an accomplished storyteller.
Sonny Girard was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan but raised in the Red Hook and Navy Yard sections of South Brooklyn: Mob Country. He has spent the greater part of his adult life on the inside of organized crime, not as a hanger-on or sycophant, but as a full time participant.

 

   The target of a three-and-a-half year undercover operation by New York's Organized Crime Control Bureau, Sonny was characterized by the New York Post as "...a middle echelon member" of one of New York's five mob families. His arrest resulted in a three year sentence in State Prison, where he maxed out in facilities like Sing Sing, Dannemora, Downstate, and Arthurkill.

 

  Convicted later of racketeering, under the R.I.C.O. Organized Crime Statute, by Rudy Giuliani's office, and sentenced to seven years in Federal Prison, Sonny Girard again served the maximum time allowed under the law. It was during that term that he wrote the first of his three novels, "Blood of Our Fathers," which was published by Pocket/Simon & Schuster.