He says a reputed underworld figure recently asked him to write dialogue for a film.
Behind it all lies an underworld that is much harder to write about than the Sicilian mafia.
But Mr. Bonanno's autobiography violated the basic Mafia tenet of omerta -- the code of secrecy -- and he was the first Mafia boss to write about his underworld affairs.
The Justice Department, which initially wanted Valachi to write a history of his underworld career, let Mr. Maas work with Valachi in prison.
The film's director and co-writer, Jez Butterworth, is a St . Albansnative who went on to write "Mojo," a play about the London underworld that made him a star in the British theater.
Told in lyrical, dream-like prose, Almond revisits a story that he said "has pestered me ever since I began to write" - the legend of music-maker Orpheus descending to the underworld to bring his love back to life.
Mr. Crouch spoke with the host Ben Ratliff about the uncanny and wide-ranging abilities of his subject, the after-hours underworld of prewar Kansas City, the sixth sense of street research, and how a single book can take 32 years to write.
Once Asbury found his true métier, though, he mostly stuck with it, going on to write "informal histories" (his preferred term) about the criminal pasts of New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco, as well as additional books on New York's underworld.
A narrowing of focus might have allowed Thomas to write with more penetration, yet the overall effect of the various chapters is undoubtedly to provide a lively social picture of the British underworld in the postwar years.
Many of the reviews I've read of DeLillo's latest book, Zero K, talk about "late period" DeLillo, suggesting that since Underworld, he's been prone to writing similar books – marked by slender plotting, elusive meanings and dense, elliptical prose.
