EXCELLENT CADAVERS

Excellent Cadavers is the story of the extraordinary efforts of two Sicilian magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who took the war against the mafia further than anyone had dared before. That war would ultimately claim their lives as well as help topple the ruling coalition that had governed Italy since World War II.

The engineers of the renowned "maxi-trials," Falcone and Borsellino succeeded in penetrating the mafia's code of silence and revealing, for the first time, the inner structure of Sicily's Cosa Nostra.

One of their great breakthroughs was to win the cooperation of Tommaso Buscetta - the first of many Sicilian bosses to become witnesses - a development that revolutionized organized crime prosecutions in the United States as well as in Italy. "Before Buscetta we didn't even know the mafia's real name," the prosecutors said.

Perhaps even more astounding than Falcone and Borsellino's successes were the government's efforts to unravel their accomplishments, to obstruct further investigation, and to impugn the character of the two prosecutors. After both men were assassinated in 1992, they were hailed as national heroes, and a massive public outcry demanded that the government pursue the investigative trail they had begun. The subsequent crackdown would lead to the indictment of many of the country's most powerful politicians.