You’ve known for years it was in New York. You knew it was in Chicago, Las Vegas, Kansas City and New Orleans, but Colorado – who knew?

Author Dick Kreck tells the story of one such Colorado family in his latest true crime venture. The collection of family and news photos and illustrations included by the author help literally flesh out the players in this saga.

The Smaldone family entered Colorado as fairly new Italian immigrants. Raffaele “Ralph” Smaldone was 7 at that time. His parents, Gaetano and Katrina Smaldone had sojourned their first five years in America in Buffalo, N.Y. but like many other Italian immigrants, the couple thought they might have more options out West.

Ralph, married in 1901 when he was 19. To support his wife, Mamie, and the children that soon began to arrive, In Colorado, Ralph worked on the railroad for several years, then bought a horse and wagon and began peddling fruit and vegetables. The family was honest and hard-working, and over the years, their two older sons, Clyde and Eugene (nicknamed “Checkers”) soon sold newspapers to help put food on the table and money in the family piggy bank. The family’s decent into crime began with Prohibition, when Ralph entered the bootlegging business. Clyde and Checkers, then teenagers, worked for their father as runners.

Clyde had a head for the business and leadership. Soon he was running booze from Colorado to Canada, and as time went by more of his brothers came into the business. Times were good, but that wouldn’t last. The Smaldone saga is filled with the typical ups and downs of organized crime. Clyde’s multiple sojourns in the U.S. penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas make for interesting reading.

While the author has meticulously researched his subject, he also had the cooperation of the two sons of Clyde Smaldone. This book is interwoven with their reflections on the life of their father and other family members as well as information contained in tape recordings made by Clyde Smaldone in his latter years. While these viewpoints are subjective and perhaps add too much of a sympathetic patina to this engaging patriarch of the crime family, they also provide an interesting vantage point from which to view the arc of Clyde’s life. While you might find Clyde Smaldone has many redeeming qualities, the bottom line is his life still bears out that old adage: crime doesn’t pay – at least in the long run. And the ones who pay the most are those the criminal loves. His story brings a whole new dimension to the expression “family man.”

If you want to take a walk on the wild side of organized crime set in a venue that hasn’t received much national news coverage or commercial fiction acclaim, this book will walk you through some new, unexplored but seamy streets.