Smoothly written bio of a lone-wolf executioner for the mob. In his first nonfiction book, mystery author Bruno (Bad Moon, 1992, etc.) puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings except toward his wife and three sons. Kuklinski—who'd used derringers, shotguns, baseball bats, tire irons, knives, ice picks, and his bare hands to kill—had been dubbed ``The Ice Man'' by the New Jersey Police after it was discovered that the body of one of his victims had been stashed for two years in an ice-cream truck owned by a friend of the killer's known as ``Mr. Softee.'' A genius at assassination when he wasn't serving kids popsicles, Mr. Softee had schooled the Ice Man in the use of cyanide, a car- bomb invention called the ``seat of death,'' and other exotic methods of murder. Cyanide proved to be Kuklinski's first love: It was quiet and discreet—you could walk by your victim, spray his face with the poison while pretending to sneeze, and he'd be dying even as he crumpled to the sidewalk. Bruno details how Dominick Polifrone, a cop who grew up with the wiseguys in Hackensack, goes undercover and gets in with the cagey Kuklinski. The hit man wants cyanide and a rich Jewish kid to sell coke to, and Polifrone wants to record Kuklinski proposing murders. As cop and killer play cat and mouse, and the bartering goes bad, the danger of Polifrone being shot at any moment is torqued tighter and tighter by Bruno. Finally, Kuklinski is caught and tried: It's determined that he's committed approximately one hundred murders, including that of Roy DeMeo, a killer so dangerous that he intimidated even John Gotti. A fast-paced, suspenseful re-creation of how a vicious killer was run to ground.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-30778-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
The very model of a major Victorian criminal—indeed, the original of Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarty—is the subject of a true crime tale by Macintyre, Paris bureau chief for the Times of London (Forgotten Fatherland, 1992). Adam Worth, an American of German-Jewish stock, emigrated to England fresh from Civil War ``bounty jumping'' (by which enterprise he collected multiple Union army enlistment bonuses by deserting and re-upping under assumed names). Like many another alluring scalawag, he transformed himself, under the alias ``Raymond,'' into a man of considerable means and social standing. The diminutive Worth was a gentleman, complete with upper-crust accent and muttonchop whiskers. He was an extravagant, clever crook as well. The fearless brains of organized crime, he eschewed violence and firearms. With the enlistment of safecrackers, forgers, bank robbers, feckless felons, and bumbling brigands who, in a later day, might have been labeled ``Runyonesque,'' Worth's lawbreaking dominion covered all of Europe and both sides of the Atlantic. Branching out, he even ran a prototypical gangsters' nightclub in Paris. The cast of the picaresque story includes an avaricious coquette, a blundering Scotland Yard sleuth, and a private detective as determined and untiring as Javert. The detective, as corpulent as Holmes was thin, was William Pinkerton, a.k.a. ``the Eye.'' Worth's most important score was Gainsborough's fabulous portrait of the fetching duchess of Devonshire. Entranced by the painting or, perhaps, by its subject, Worth kept the swag with him for two decades. It was Pinkerton, upon Worth's fall, who negotiated the picture's return—for a reward paid to Worth. The detective and the master criminal ended as friends. A delightful Victorian tale of colorful miscreants and dissembling rogues, told in engaging style. (8 pages photos, not seen) (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-21899-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
Novelist Lowry (Breaking Gentle, 1988, etc.) delivers a stunning work of nonfiction, charting the growth of a strange but healing intimacy between herself and a young woman prisoner sentenced to die for a gruesome murder. In 1988, Lowry was still in the state of numbness that had arisen four years earlier when her 17-year-old son Peter had died in a hit-and-run accident. Peter had been troubled, and in trouble, for years, and Lowry's grief was compounded by an obscure sense of guilt at somehow having failed him as a mother. Then she read about Karla Faye Tucker in The Houston Chronicle, her hometown paper. Karla fascinated Lowry with the contrast between her innocent prettiness and the horror of her crime—the motiveless, drug- impelled pickaxe murder of a hated acquaintance and his female companion. The luridness of Karla's background—she was a call-girl mom who taught her two daughters her trade and shot heroin with them—made her story even more compelling. Lowry requested an interview, and Karla agreed, beginning a series of monthly visits in which the women shared details of their respective tragedies, as well as a lot of plain old restorative girl-talk. That Karla is Lowry's substitute child, the one she can do right by to make up for her self-perceived failure with Peter, and that Lowry is the good mother Karla never had, is an unavoidable inference—but there is more to this complex relationship: a shared taste between Lowry and Karla for mystery and impulse, and a mutual amazement as to ``how much happiness you can find within completely unacceptable givens.'' Gripping true-crime details and marvelous local color in Lowry's rendering of the wild, heartless boomtown of Houston make this a real page-turner. But most remarkable is the author's insight into the human capacity for extremes of violence and tenderness, brutality and nobility.
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41184-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
