The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter
by Linda Scarpa and Linda Rosencranz
Those who are expecting this memoir to be basically a fictionalized version of The Godfather, reading The Mafia Hit Man’s Daughter will be quite sobering. It’s horrifying to realize that the pages are documenting someone’s life. No one should have a life like the author had. She has been correctly diagnosed with PTSD, and I don’t think there’s any way for her to have a normal, functional life after witnessing such horrific violence to her family. Mob violence is glamorized in Hollywood, and audiences have become desensitized to machine gun bullets. They look forward to the rat-a-tat sound and grin when bad guys keel over – but some people actually live in those situations. I had to keep reminding myself as I read one gruesome passage after anther that this was a woman’s life. I wasn’t reading someone’s imagination in a fiction novel. She lived through machine gun fire, held dying bodies in her arms, and testified against murderers in court.
The writing style is extremely casual, and some passages appear to be translated verbatim from a tape recorder. For the type of story that this is, and for the tone of the author, the style isn’t really cause for complaint, but just don’t expect it to feel much different from a documentary interview. I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you’re a fan of true crime or can handle very heavy violent and sorrowful material.
The writing style is extremely casual, and some passages appear to be translated verbatim from a tape recorder. For the type of story that this is, and for the tone of the author, the style isn’t really cause for complaint, but just don’t expect it to feel much different from a documentary interview. I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you’re a fan of true crime or can handle very heavy violent and sorrowful material.