Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys

Now in hiding, a former wiseguy teams up with a veteran true-crime writer to take you inside Brooklyn’s gangland at the height of its violence.   This is the true story of Carmine Imbriale—a gambler, a brawler, a bandit, a bookie, an enforcer. For two decades, Imbriale was a street-level operative in one of the most violent crews in the Colombo Family, and he endeared himself to some of the major figures of organized crime while developing deadly disputes with others. Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys is the jarring account of his lawless lifestyle culminating in a gang war in South Brooklyn, from which he emerges a survivor.   From his first arrest at fifteem for robbing a Coney Island pimp to surviving multiple assassination attempts, Imbriale offers up dozens of too-good-to-be-true tales featuring some of the most notorious gangsters, including Joe Colombo, Christie Tick, Jimmy Ida, Joe Waverly, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, Johnny Rizzo, as well as other lions and lackeys of La Cosa Nostra, and details a beef with none other than Greg “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa Sr.   A young streetwise hustler, Imbriale thought he found loyalty, a brotherhood. Instead, he descended into a world of treachery and deceit, where your best friend is your executioner, and no one gets out alive. But no one expected him to become the domino that helped bring it all down.