Phoenix Books is proud to present BREAKSHOT: A Life in the 21st Century Mafia, the salacious tell-all memoir of Kenny “Kenji” Gallo, the playboy Japanese-American gangster who is the most controversial figure in the American underworld over the past thirty years.
In a stranger-than-fiction career that included stints with Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, Los Angeles’ Milano Mafia Family, New York’s Lucchese and Colombo Mafia Families, and the California porn industry, Kenji employed guile and brute force to become the most famous Asian-American gangster in modern history. Phoenix Books will publish in August.
BREAKSHOT tells the action-packed story of how a bookish mixed-race kid from ritzy Orange County embraced the life of a teenage cocaine smuggler in the 1980s. Under the glamorous Miami Vice-style cocaine cowboy Joey Avila and the terrifying Michael “Big Mike” Marvich, Pablo Escobar’s California viceroy, Gallo grossed millions in the cocaine trade, led his own narcotrafficking crew, owned his own dance club, and had been arrested for everything from murdering his best friend to running over another teenager with his car — all before he could legally drink.
BREAKSHOT is also the most salacious, uncensored, and insightful exposé of the porn industry ever published. As a porn producer, director, and racketeer in the San Fernando Valley for over a decade, Gallo became infamous for his dysfunctional marriage to porn star and Howard Stern regular Tabitha Stevens and his tumultuous relationships with porn icons Jill Kelly, Savannah, and Amber Lynn. Gallo pulls back the curtain on America’s most lucrative and corrupt entertainment industry, revealing the sordid truth about the epidemic of premature deaths, drug abuse, and organized crime collusion that has beset the porn industry over the past quarter-century.
BREAKSHOT tells the unique, outrageous, and cliché-busting story of how the 21-year-old suburban Japanese kid joined the Colombo Family under the legendary wiseguy John “Sonny” Franzese and his charismatic Jewish lieutenant, Jerry Zimmerman. After a few years with the Colombos, Gallo joined LA’s Milano Mafia Family under the iconic West Coast mafioso Vincent “Jimmy” Caci, who took Kenji under his wing and taught him the way of the wiseguy. Gallo delivers a hilarious, withering account of both the bumbling Sopranos-esque thugs of the younger generation of the Mafia and the cinematic if helplessly outdated elder statesman of the Mob.
BREAKSHOT comes to a thrilling conclusion when a penitent, maturing Gallo agrees to become an undercover FBI and NYPD operative against organized crime across America. Gallo put his life in constant danger shortly when he moved to Brooklyn in 2001 and became a criminal associate of the murderous Colombo and Lucchese Mafia Families.
In the process of earning a Mafia contract on his head, Gallo uncovered a Mob plot to steal millions from the 9/11 Ground Zero site, was deputized on an attempted Mafia murder, and contributed to the imprisonment of Mob leaders Theodore “Teddy” Persico of the Colombo Family, John “Johnny Goggles” Baudanza of the Lucchese Family, and Michelle “Nici” Braun, America’s foremost madam. Narrowly escaping a Mafia attempt on his life, Gallo was relocated under a new identity by the federal government and currently lives as a successful, lawful white-collar businessman.
Detailing Kenny Gallo’s glamorous, violent, and ultimately redemptive journey as an Asian-American gangster in the underworld, BREAKSHOT is the unforgettable story of one of the most unique and unlikely characters in modern American history.