Making Jack Falcone
by Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia (with Michael Levin)
Simon & Schuster HK$202
Joaquin Garcia ate his way into the mafia. The only FBI special agent other than 'Donnie Brasco' (Joseph Pistone) to infiltrate La Cosa Nostra, the Cuban-born Garcia gained 40kg during his 21/2 years of mob-related undercover work. Those who dine with wiseguys, he learned, need to know food. It was a part of the training he 'particularly enjoyed'.
During the course of hundreds of such 'food orgies' he not only brought a New York mafia family down, but his resting heartbeat shot to 220, normal only in a fevered newborn. Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family, is his story.
An undercover operative for more than 25 years, Garcia saw 'hundreds and hundreds of bad guys' being incarcerated (his FBI record includes myriad short-term and 45 long-term major undercover investigations). 'The difference between most agents and me is that I work multiple major cases simultaneously ... sometimes juggling five or six different identities and roles,' he explains.