Author(s): John Silvester

True Crime

'Pino' Acquaro got his big Italian funeral, but the mobsters didn't get the memo. The church was packed but nearly every gangster he knew stayed away. The handsome mafia lawyer had bungled burning down his Brunswick bar for the insurance but he had burned his bridges beyond repair. A couple of hard men turned up. The sort that wear sunglasses in church. One was the departed's last client, a cool customer who'd been a regular at Acquaro's bar. And there was a bald heavyweight wearing so much chunky gold he'd hardly need concrete boots if he had to be sent to sleep with the fishes. The dead man's son read from the Book of Wisdom. The bit that says he who lives among sinners being carried off before treachery seduces the soul. Good advice but it came too late for the guy in the coffin...Just another tale from Australia's underbelly. There are plenty more in Shot at Close Range, the latest from the writers that have charted the rise and rise of crime in this country for more than twenty years.