the workings of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra

[metafictionally]

Setting and time: Present-day Sicily.

Other searches: Google ("Sicilian Cosa Nostra"; "Cosa Nostra in Sicily"; "workings of the Mafia"; "Sicilian Mafia hierarchy"). I did find some helpful articles, but the vast majority either dealt with the history of the Cosa Nostra, which isn't quite what I'm looking for, or weren't what I would consider '

Comments

[subluxate]

You're looking for a traditional hitman, someone who executes murders? From what I'm seeing, the Sicilian Mafia has cut back a lot on killing in recent years, so it might be a good idea to find a different position, if feasible. That said, the articles I've read in the past do refer to enforcers being quite low on the Sicilian Mafia's hierarchy, just above associates, but frequently, actual murders are/were carried out by made men of varying ranks. Provenzano is believed to have carried out somewhere in the range of forty murders before he became capo di tutti capi, but he was still fairly high-ranking at the time.

[metafictionally]

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the plot of the novella requires him to be a hitman :< I had come to more or less the same conclusion regarding hitmen (that they don't exist nearly as much in recent years), but I suppose -- I was more looking for information about where they would hypothetically fall on the chain of being, if one were to exist.

When you say "by men of varying ranks," do you mean that it's equally feasible for, I don't know, a capodecina to carry out a murder as it is for the uomini d'onore?

[koulagirl666]

The book Cosa Nostra: a history of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie might have something you could use.

Edited to fix HTML booboo.

[reconditarmonia]

Ohshit there was a book on the Cosa Nostra a few months ago and I can't remember what it is. It was discussed on Pandagon briefly (wrt how Al-Qaeda works the same way with how it becomes part of the economy and social structure) - any other Pandagonians remember what it was?