Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life


Robert Lacey - 1991
    Based on interviews with Lansky's close friends & criminal associates, with law enforcement experts, & with members of Lansky's own family, & using previously unpublished documents written by Lansky himself, this is both the biography of a mob operator & a social history of American crime.

Blue Blood


Edward Conlon - 2004
    While there is action here, there's also political hassle, the rich and often troubling history of a department not unfamiliar with corruption, and the day to day life of people charged with preserving order in America's largest city. Conlon's book is, in part, a memoir as he progresses from being a rookie cop working the beat at troubled housing projects to assignments in the narcotics division to eventually becoming a detective. But it's also the story of his family history within the enormous NYPD as well as the evolving role of the police force within the city.Conlon relates the controversies surrounding the somewhat familiar shooting of Amadou Diallou and the abuse, at the hands of New York cops, of Abner Louima. But being a cop himself, Conlon lends insight and nuance to these issues that could not possibly be found in the newspapers. And as an outstanding writer, he draws the reader into that world. In the book's most remarkable passage, Conlon tells of the grim but necessary work done at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the rubble and remains left in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 (a section originally published in The New Yorker).In many ways, Blue Blood comes to resemble the world of New York City law enforcement that Conlon describes: both are expansive, sprawling, multi-dimensional, and endlessly fascinating. And Conlon's writing is perfectly matched to his subject, always lively, keenly observant, and possessing a streetwise energy.

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York


Elon Green - 2021
    The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.Nor will he be his last.The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.

The Mafia and the Machine: The Story of the Kansas City Mob


Frank R. Hayde - 2007
    Events unfolding in this city affected the fortunes of all the 'families', & shaped the entire underworld. In this book, Frank Hayde ties in every major name in organised crime as well as the corrupt Kansas City police force.

Precious Victims


Don W. Weber - 1991
    Three years later her second newborn daughter suffered an identical fate and this time the police were unable to stop searching until they had discovered the whole, horrifying truth.This is the full terrifying story of twisted sexuality and hate seething below the surface of a seemingly normal family, and of the massive investigation and nerve shattering trial that made the unthinkable a reality. Written by the lawyer who won the case and the reporter who covered its entirety, the reader is given a unique close-up of the riveting drama that unfolds, painting a dark picture of the depraved family who lived with a murderous secret.

Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky


William Van Meter - 2008
     She came from a tiny village in Kentucky. The State moved her as a child into a foster home in a town so small it had one stoplight. New to her own beauty and a little awkward, Katie had the biggest smile on her high school cheerleading squad. In September 2002, she matriculated as a freshman at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. She majored in the dental program, but as it was for many college students her age, partying was of equal priority. She worked days at the smoothie shop, nights at the local strip club, and fell in love with a football player who wouldn't date her. Five feet two in heels and without a bad word to say about anyone, Katie Autry was sweet, kind, and utterly naïve. She was making the clumsy strides of a newborn colt, discovering what the world was like and learning to be her own person. And on the morning of May 4, 2003, Katie Autry was raped, stabbed, sprayed with hairspray, and set on fire in her own dormitory room. In telling the true story of this shocking crime, Bluegrass describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men, whose lives seem preordained to intertwine, are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high school dropout, atthe scene, and Lucas Goodrum, a twenty-one-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and an inauspicious history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this tale is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes. With the keen eye of a talented young journalist returning to his southern roots, Van Meter paints a vivid portrait of the town, the characters who fill it, and the simmering class conflicts that made an injustice like this not only possible, but inevitable.

My Life in the Mafia


Vincent Charles Teresa - 1973
    

Son of Escobar: First Born


Roberto Sendoya Escobar - 2020
    He became one of the ten richest men on the planet and controlled 80 per cent of the global cocaine trade before he was shot dead in 1993.In 1965, a secret mission by Colombian Special Forces, led by an MI6 agent, to recover a cash hoard from a safe house used by a young Pablo Escobar culminates in a shoot-out leaving many dead. Escobar and several of his men escape. Only a baby survives, Roberto Sendoya Escobar. In a bizarre twist of fate, the MI6 agent takes pity on the child, brings him home and later adopts him.Over the years, Pablo Escobar tries, repeatedly, to kidnap his son. The child, unaware of his true identity, is allowed regular meetings with Escobar and it becomes apparent that Roberto’s adopted father and the British government are working covertly with the gangster in an attempt to control the money laundering and drug trades.Many years later in England, as Roberto’s father lies dying in hospital, he hands his son a coded piece of paper which, he says, reveals the secret hiding place of Escobar’s ‘missing millions'. The code is published in this book for the first time.

Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America


Sam Giancana - 1992
    This book looks at the life of one of America's most notorious gangsters.

The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy


Robin Moore - 1969
    The true, absorbing and sometimes frightening documentary of the world's most successful narcotics investigation, The French Connection is one of the most fascinating crime accounts of our time. When New York City detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and his partner Sonny Grosso routinely tail Pasquale "Patsy" Fuca, after observing some wild spending at the Copacabana, they quickly realize that they are on to something really big. Patsy is not only the nephew of a mob boss on the lam but also a key negotiator in an impending delivery of narcotics from abroad. His incongruous connections are with several distinguished Frenchmen, including Jean Jehan, the director of the world's largest heroin network, and Jacques Angelvin, a star of French television. For many suspense-filled months, through opulent Manhattan nightclubs, dark tenements in Brooklyn and the Bronx, tree-lined streets of the genteel Upper East Side, and in Paris, Marseilles, and Palermo, the duel is on -- the prize 112 pounds of pure heroin, worth ninety million on the streets. Over three hundred investigators from local, state, federal, and international agencies are ultimately involved in the hours of weary surveillance, the skilled intuition, the luck -- both good and bad -- and the danger.

Mr. Capone


Robert J. Schoenberg - 1992
    All I ever did was to supply a demand that was pretty popular.    Why, the very guys that make my trade good are the ones that yell the loudest about me. Some of the leading judges use the stuff.    When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.-- Al Capone

Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic


Alexander Stille - 1995
    The latest "excellent cadavers" were Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the Sicilian magistrates who had been the Cosa Nostra's most implacable enemies. Yet in the aftermath of the murders, hundreds of "men of honor" were arrested and the government that ad protected them for nearly half a century was at last driven from office. This is the story that Stille tells with such insight and immediacy in Excellent Cadavers. Combining a profound understanding of his doomed heroes with and unprecedented look into the Mafia's stringent codes and murderous rivalries, he gives us a book that has the power of a great work of history and the suspense of a true thriller."Riveting...a well-paced and highly informative account stocked with well-drawn characters."--Philadelphia Inquirer"Masterful...[Stille] delivers a stiletto-sharp portrait of the bloodthirsty Sicilian mafia."--Business Week

Wiseguy


Nicholas Pileggi - 1985
    "Wiseguy" is Henry Hill's story, in fascinating, brutal detail, the never-before-revealed day-to-day life of a working mobster - his violence, his wild spending sprees, his wife, his mistresses, his code of honor.

Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob


Bob Delaney - 2008
    Delaney accepted, and became Bobby Covert, the president of Alamo Trucking, a fully-operational business used by law enforcement as flypaper for snagging crooks. At the height of The Godfather era, Delaney wore a wire and lived among wiseguys who modeled themselves on their on-screen counterparts, quoting lines from “The Movie” and boasting of how often they’d seen it. Delaney even crossed paths with Joe Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco (though neither knew the other was undercover), knowing all the while that a single slip could get him killed.Ultimately gathering enough evidence to convict 30 members of the Bruno and Genovese crime families, Project Alpha was a success, but Delaney struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and traces of Stockholm syndrome after getting too close to those he investigated. Therapy helped him come to terms with all he’d endured during his three tense years undercover, and, once a college basketball star, Delaney began officiating high school and intramural games as a way to rebuild his life—eventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades.

Murder Machine


Gene Mustain - 1992
    Their Mafia higher-ups came to know, use, and ultimately fear them as the Murder Machine. They killed for profit and for pleasure, following cold-blooded plans and wild whims, from the mean streets of New York to the Florida Gold Coast, and from coast to coast.Now complete with personal revelations of one of the key players, this is the savage story that leaves no corpse unturned in its terrifying telling.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS