Not exactly a self-portrait of a criminal mastermind, but a somewhat worthwhile glimpse into the schizoid world of a corrupt...
A former crooked cop looks back on his conflict-of-interest life as a policeman and midlevel grifter.
Italian-American and native Chicagoan Pascente’s nonfiction debut, co-written with crime novelist Reaves (Mean Town Blues, 2008, etc.), is a rollicking mess of a wiseguy memoir that vividly evokes the sights, sounds, and sins of a long-vanished criminal gangland of Chicago. Born in 1942 (he died in 2014) in a typically rough urban district of the city’s Near West Side, Pascente grew up with future “made man” Tony Spilotro (immortalized in Nick Pileggi’s book Casino), who would eventually be financially linked to Pascente’s future police boss William Hanhardt. While Spilotro went on to become a mob heavyweight running a casino empire in Las Vegas in the 1960s, Pascente served in the Army before getting an early discharge for joining the police force; he ended up working under Hanhardt, who would exploit Pascente’s gangland connections. During his more than 25 years as a cop, the author may have spent more time committing crimes than preventing them. The book is packed cover to cover with Pascente’s pithy tales of the dirty deeds he and his corrupt cohorts (with cartoon gangster names like Johnny Bananas, Louie the Mooch, and Milwaukee Phil) pulled off for big money: insider bank scores, racetrack betting swindles, casino heists, mail and insurance scams, and plenty more. Pascente, for all his shady dealings, ended up doing very little jail time in a minimum-security prison for insurance fraud (although he did lose his police pension). Of course, his criminal curriculum vitae can’t compare to those of Henry Hill or Whitey Bulger, but Pascente comes off about as affable as any criminal could. In the end, he expressed a modicum of shame and regret over his weakness for the lure of easy money.
Not exactly a self-portrait of a criminal mastermind, but a somewhat worthwhile glimpse into the schizoid world of a corrupt cop.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61373-134-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history...
A murder that transfixed the world and the invention that made possible the chase for its perpetrator combine in this fitfully thrilling real-life mystery.
Using the same formula that propelled Devil in the White City (2003), Larson pairs the story of a groundbreaking advance with a pulpy murder drama to limn the sociological particulars of its pre-WWI setting. While White City featured the Chicago World’s Fair and America’s first serial killer, this combines the fascinating case of Dr. Hawley Crippen with the much less gripping tale of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio. (Larson draws out the twin narratives for a long while before showing how they intersect.) Undeniably brilliant, Marconi came to fame at a young age, during a time when scientific discoveries held mass appeal and were demonstrated before awed crowds with circus-like theatricality. Marconi’s radio sets, with their accompanying explosions of light and noise, were tailor-made for such showcases. By the early-20th century, however, the Italian was fighting with rival wireless companies to maintain his competitive edge. The event that would bring his invention back into the limelight was the first great crime story of the century. A mild-mannered doctor from Michigan who had married a tempestuously demanding actress and moved to London, Crippen became the eye of a media storm in 1910 when, after his wife’s “disappearance” (he had buried her body in the basement), he set off with a younger woman on an ocean-liner bound for America. The ship’s captain, who soon discerned the couple’s identity, updated Scotland Yard (and the world) on the ship’s progress—by wireless. The chase that ends this story makes up for some tedious early stretches regarding Marconi’s business struggles.
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-8066-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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