A sordid but strangely bland tale of cold-bloodedness.
How one minister sowed heartbreak and homicide in a tiny community.
True-crime vet and novelist Olsen (Heart of Ice, 2009, etc.) follows Nick Hacheney, who was convicted in 2002 for killing his wife, Dawn, the day after Christmas 1997. That year Nick was a minister at Christ Community Church, an apostolic congregation on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, where he served as a youth pastor and marriage counselor. In the latter capacity he spent far more time with the wives than the husbands, growing close to Sandy Glass, who claimed to have visions from God about the fates of members of the church community. Such pronouncements were common at the church, whose lead pastor regularly led sessions in which congregants were browbeaten into confessing the smallest moral transgressions. (One woman was ostracized for allowing her children to view an Ace Ventura movie.) Yet not only did Nick evade suspicion for nearly four years after Dawn’s death—she was given an overdose of Benadryl and the house was set on fire—he also juggled relationships with no fewer than four parishioners, at one point drawing even Dawn’s mother into his web. What made Nick so attractive? Olsen, who conducted interviews with dozens of people involved, is surprisingly at a loss to explain. Indeed, he often stresses that this would-be lothario was a pudgy, ungainly man. The book is structured like a crime thriller, and though the author’s reporting on specific events is solid, his simplistic characterizations of the major players make the circumstances seem just as baffling by the book’s end as its beginning. The squabbling between a long-term pastor and a newcomer is pitted as a battle between a milquetoast and a holy roller; the women Nick seduced and victimized are described nearly interchangeably, with little color outside their roles as mothers, wives and Nick’s toys. Using original documents doesn’t help. As pious churchgoers, their letters, e-mails and diary entries are filled with clichéd pieties. Olsen’s prose too often fails to improve on it.
A sordid but strangely bland tale of cold-bloodedness.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-36061-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
When the feds nailed John Gotti earlier this year, they decapitated a crime syndicate that, according to Davis (Mafia Kingfish, 1988, etc.), numbers perhaps 500 ``soldiers'' and thousands of associates, and nets at least $500 million annually. How the Gambino crime family reached this dark pinnacle makes, in Davis's hands, for a gripping true-crime history. As in his other dynastic studies (The Kennedys, 1984, etc.), Davis doesn't dig out new data here so much as collate others' research, spiced with his own firsthand anecdotes. Though the roots of the Gambinos, he explains, reach back to the Neapolitan and Sicilian mobs of the early 1900's, the crime family's story really begins in 1931, when Lucky Luciano reorganized New York's underworld and named one Vincent Mangano to head the most powerful faction, or family. In 1951, Mangano was killed, probably by Murder Inc. head Albert Anastasia, who took over as family boss; Anastasia's underboss was Carlo Gambino, who, in 1957, engineered his chief's murder and became boss in turn, giving the family its name. Davis focuses on the reigns of Gambino, the ultimate mob businessman, bland but ruthless; his successor, Paul Castellano, who ruled like a caesar from his Staten Island mansion; and Gotti. The author covers every rumor and fact about the Gambinos (e.g., that J. Edgar Hoover kept hands off organized crime because he got betting tips from Gambino Çminence grise Frank Costello). Davis describes his encounters in Naples with the exiled Luciano (``a small man with narrow sloping shoulders and a repulsive face''); offers an eyewitness account of the recent Gotti trial; and explains the economic workings of the family in full. He also—in the book's primary flaw—envelopes his text in moral thunder (Carlo Gambino was ``a monstrous parasite,'' etc.). An authoritative overview of the nation's premier criminal organization, and of the greed and hubris that have toppled its leaders time and again. (Photos—16 pp.—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-016357-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Absorbing story of how the FBI developed a new mode of attack on the New Jersey crime family—and then failed to make its case in court. Rudolph covers organized crime for Newark's Star-Ledger. Once the FBI had admitted, during the mid-70's, that there was such a thing as the mafia, it began insinuating undercover agents into crime families, especially—in the mid-80's—into the Lucchese family, which had a lock on New Jersey rackets such as loan- sharking, gambling, fraud, extortion, and drug-dealing. Masterminded by FBI agent Dennis Marchalonis, the government operation was carried on with such enormous secrecy—it had been decided to make a case against an entire crime family and wipe it out all at once, a historic decision—that FBI agents might find themselves under surveillance by two or three other legal agencies. When the secret task force finally had its evidence—gathered from wiretaps, informants, and agents—it rounded up the entire Lucchese family, then headed by Anthony (``Tumac'') Accetturo and Michael (``Mad Dog'') Taccetta, and brought indictments against 21 defendants. The government had a strong case and assembled a terrific team of prosecutors, led by hot-tempered, aggressive V. Gray O'Malley, who had never lost a case. The defense had a huge, strong, smartly chosen team as well. The flaw in the federal case was its size and the nearly two years it took to prosecute before a jury so wearied by picayune detail and evidence wandering off on endless tangents—with the jury's families under intense scrutiny all the while—that long before the 21 cases went to the jury, the jury had decided not to convict—in part, says Rudolph, to spite the government for having put it through such an ordeal. Richly served up and dotted with absurd moments as the fat cats go free and the feds eat their shoes. (Eight pages of b&w photographs.)
Pub Date: April 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-09259-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
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