Recent publications have been leveling harsh criticism against the depiction of criminals in popular media, prominent targets including the über-Godfather Vito Corleone, who is portrayed benevolently as a caring paterfamilias, or Tony Montana (Scarface), whose gun fetishism has turned him into a pop-cultural icon. There can be no doubt that our understanding of mob structures relies heavily on the consumption of movies,¹ and even a laudable and meticulous study such as John Dickie’s history of the Cosa Nostra demonstrates that it is nigh impossible to abandon the realm of myth altogether. By segmenting historical facts into chapters featuring headings like “Genesis,” “War and Rebirth,” or “Bombs and Submersion,” Dickie’s book illustrates Hayden White’s model of narrative discourse: The history of crime proves just as much susceptible to the influence of generic schemes as any other form of historiography, since the presence of narrative capacity indicates the presence of meaning itself (White 2). Consequently, Dickie’s narrative resorts to the same patterns of rise and fall which are characteristic of mob movies and which, by extension, evoke the genre of tragedy.