Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster

For the first 25 years of his criminal career, Lucky Luciano was a vicious mobster who rose to become the multi-millionaire king of the New York underworld. For the next 25 years of his life, Luciano was a legend—but a fake master criminal without real power, his evil reputation manipulated and maintained by the government agents who had put him behind bars. That is the astonishing conspiracy revealed in Tim Newark’s myth-busting book.

Drawing on secret government documents from archives in America and Europe, Newark tells the real story of the legendary gangster from his early days as a top hit man for the mob to his exploits running sex and narcotics empires. Newark reveals for the first time, Luciano’s transatlantic trip to Nazi Germany to set up a drugs importing racket. Then comes prison for Luciano—but his reputation is only enhanced when it is claimed that he is winning World War Two for the Allies with secret help during fighting in Sicily and the Mediterranean. Through painstaking research, Newark exposes the truth about what Luciano really did do to help the Allies in the war.

With his expulsion from the USA, Luciano returned to Italy where he became the arch villain for international law enforcement agencies. He was reputed to head a massive transatlantic narcotics network, but Newark reveals how Luciano was being used by government agents to justify their own bloated law-enforcement budgets. It was an extraordinary conspiracy in which Luciano—the fake master criminal—became the victim of far bigger powers around him. Newark provides evidence that, at one time, he was even working as a Cold War agent, helping the US government fight Communism in Sicily. It is an extraordinary story that has never been told before—in which the American Mafia becomes entangled with foreign war and Cold War conspiracy.

Book Author

Tim-newark Tim Newark is the author of several well-received crime and military history books. In 2007, he published The Mafia at War/Mafia Allies (Greenhill/Zenith), which involved extensive archival research in London, New York, Washington, and Sicily. It was very well reviewed by Mafia authorities and praised for its depth of research. This was followed by his myth-busting biography of legendary gangster Lucky Luciano (St Martin’s Press/Mainstream), now published in paperback in US as Boardwalk Gangster to coincide with the second season of the hit HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire. Most rec...
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Book Reviews

  • John Dickie, best-selling author of Cosa Nostra
    "Great detective work here. Tim Newark has uncovered fascinating new angles on the Lucky Luciano story and tells it well."
  • Robert Rockaway, best-selling author of The Lives and Crimes of Jewish gangsters
    "Tim Newark's beautifully written and thoroughly researched studies offer new information and penetrating insights on hitherto little known chapters in the history of American organized crime."
  • Booklist
    "absorbing and well-researched biography."
  • Eric Dezenhall, Huffington Post
    "Never has there been a greater challenge to mafiaphiles than the recent release of Tim Newark's book, Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster. Newark concludes that while Luciano played a pioneering role in modernizing the rackets during and after Prohibition, the jig was largely up after he went to jail on vice charges in 1936. In the final years of his life, ‘Charlie Lucky's’ name was used as a proxy for anything sinister and seemingly organized. Luciano is a fascinating case of how criminals are made, broken - and made again."
  • Doug Bentin, bookgasm.com
    "Newark shows us a different take on the Mafia and especially on one of its star attractions. It’s a relatively short book, built more for speed than intensity. After reading it, you may never think of big-time organized crime lords quite the same way again."
  • Robert Miller, Enigma Books
    "  Tim Newark gives us an excellent Lucky Luciano with a wide-angle view of the gangster’s life and misdeeds based upon solid research and a critical examination of what has been written about him so far… Tim Newark tells the whole fascinating story in precise language following impeccable research and a passion for detail that makes this book such an engaging experience. We highly recommend it to all those searching for the truth about the Mob."
  • Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 2010
    "  Living in the United States now, I’m trying to read exciting books about the place and have hugely enjoyed Tim Newark’s well-written and well-researched biography of the Mafia boss Lucky Luciano."
  • Four-star review in News of the World
    "Boy, does Tim Newark expose his legend to scrutiny. The mobster—dubbed Lucky Luciano—built his notoriety on myths. But, by trawling through government files, Newark explodes the falsehoods by revealing the truth about his rise to power… A must for true crime fans."
  • BBC History Magazine
    "Using a range of official sources and dissecting some of the dubious memoirs of mobsters, including that of Luciano himself, Tim Newark provides what is, probably, the most balanced biography of a man who often claimed to be a victim, but had little thought for his own victims.  "