> Skip to content
Lucky Luciano
  • Published: 31 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781907195976
  • Imprint: Mainstream Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

Lucky Luciano

Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent



Another revelatory work by the author of the critically acclaimed Mafia Allies

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano was a vicious mobster who rose to become the multimillionaire king of the New York underworld. He was a legend - but also a fake master criminal without real power, his reputation manipulated and maintained by the government agents who had put him behind bars.

Drawing on secret government documents from archives in America and Europe, this myth-busting biography tells Luciano's real story, from his early days as a top hit man for the mob to his exploits running sex and narcotics empires and revelations about his trip to Nazi Germany to set up a drugs importing racket. His career abruptly halted by imprisonment, Luciano's reputation was enhanced by rumours that he was helping to win the Second World War for the Allies in Sicily and the Mediterranean. Through painstaking research, Newark exposes the truth about what Luciano really did during the war.

Expelled from the US in 1946, Luciano returned to Italy, where he was reputed to head a massive transatlantic narcotics network. In a complex conspiracy, he became a victim of the far greater powers around him, and Newark provides evidence that, at one time, he was even working as a Cold War agent, helping the US government fight Communism in Sicily. Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent turns accepted Mafia history on its head with an extraordinary story that has never been told before.

  • Published: 31 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781907195976
  • Imprint: Mainstream Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

Tim Newark

Tim Newark is the author of several critically acclaimed true-crime books. He contributes book reviews to the Financial Times, Time Out and the Daily Telegraph, and has also worked as a TV scriptwriter and historical consultant.

Praise for Lucky Luciano

A complex, compelling story

SAGA Magazine

A must for true crime fans (****)

News of the World

Great detective work here. Tim Newark has uncovered fascinating new angles on the Lucky Luciano story and tells it well

John Dickie, author of Cosa Nostra

I have hugely enjoyed Tim Newark's well-written and well-researched biography of the Mafia boss Lucky Luciano

Andrew Roberts, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

Never has there been a greater challenge to mafiaphiles than the recent release of Tim Newark's book. Lucky Luciano is a fascinating case of how criminals are made, broken-and made again

Huffington Post

Newark's beautifully written and thoroughly researched studies offer new information and penetrating insights on hitherto little known chapters in the history of American organised crime

Robert Rockaway, author of But He Was Good To His Mother

The most balanced biography of a man who often claimed to be a victim, but had little thought for his own victims

BBC History Magazine

Tim Newark wastes no time in tearing apart the man, the myth and the legend of Lucky Luciano

Inside Time