A couple of years ago, my wife and I went down to Dallas-Fort Worth to buy some replacement chairs for our dining room table. We were given the address of an "interesting" restaurant furniture shop, which seemed to be stocked largely with things that had fallen off the back of various and sundry trucks. The proprietor, "Eddie", was a very interesting person too: an Albanian immigrant, who'd been in the USA for a couple of decades, but hadn't lost anything of his Mediterranean background or his Albanian customs. Miss D. was highly amused by the almost courtly way he treated her as the wife of an honored customer... but she had to keep her place. No new-fangled women's lib around here!
Anyway, we were laughing about "Eddie" and his ways on the way home, and I got to thinking. I knew that the Albanian Mafia was a big thing in the criminal underworld of Europe, and to some extent in the USA. What if they, in due course, extended their tentacles into space? After thinking about it some more, I wrote the Cochrane's Company trilogy, which was published in 2018, and has proved fairly popular. It deals with precisely that - the Albanian Mafia in space.
I was reminded of this backstory by a crime report last weekend. I won't go into details, because a friend is involved, but it seems an Albanian gang tried to extort a business owner, and got shot up for their pains. It seems both criminals and potential victims have a hard streak to them in Albania!
Peter
I somehow read the headline as "Albertan Mafia", and actually got to the last paragraph before realizing that all the discussion of Albanians wasn't for means of comparison to organized Canadian crime gangs
ReplyDeleteAlbania is NOT for the faint of heart... Just sayin...
ReplyDeleteDoes the Albertan Mafia shake down the owners of Tim Hortons restaurants with raised voices and strongly worded letters?
ReplyDeleteMob memoirs I have read say that the Albanian Mob has a rep for ferocity and utter loyalty. They, the Yakuza, the Russian Mafiya and other newcomers are probably what's going to eclipse what's left of the old Italian Mafia.
ReplyDeleteThe Italian Mafia probably won't ever go away completely, any more than the Irish mob it displaced did. But it will not be predominant any more. At best, it'll be one of many ethnic mobs. Part of the reason is that Italian boys who, in the old days, would have been part of the recruit pool for the Mafia now have a lot of opportunities on the legit side of the fence.
The Albanian mafia rules much of Europe with an iron fist. The Sicilians are men of honor. The Albanians are not. They start with the kids.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Albanians first made a move into NYC, the Italians and Russians joined forces to exterminate them.
Never, ever let any women you care about go anywhere near Albanians alone, or even in small groups.