A suspenseful, informative take on an ambitious criminal investigation.
A nonfiction account reveals how a dedicated law enforcement team dismantled one of San Francisco’s most notorious gangs over the course of four years.
If gangs commit so much of their mayhem in the open, with members flaunting their allegiance and violent achievements, what makes it so difficult to catch and prosecute them? In their book, debut author Santini, a special agent, and journalist Bolger (Near Side of the Moon, 2013) demonstrate all of the challenges involved. They meticulously reconstruct how Santini and his team from Homeland Security Investigations finally brought San Francisco’s branch of MS-13 to justice. The authors take readers back to the gang’s founding by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, tracing MS-13’s expansion into an international criminal web and detailing the complicated rules and hierarchies of the San Francisco offshoot. By the early 2000s, MS-13 and other gangs had made the city’s streets infamously unsafe, viciously killing one another to protect their turf while frequently catching innocent bystanders in the crossfire. But putting individuals behind bars fails to deter crime overall, so in 2004, Santini set about infiltrating MS-13 with a series of undercover informants who collected varied evidence against dozens of members, waiting for the right time to bring them down. In these politically charged times, readers will be quick to notice that although fairly businesslike in tone, the book is singular in focus, squarely presenting the views of law enforcement officials. (Sanctuary city policies are seen almost entirely through the lens of how they obstruct police, and misguided hippies and liberals are gently but clearly derided.) Nevertheless, Santini and Bolger provide readers of all backgrounds with valuable insights into the psychology of both individual gang members and MS-13 as a whole, portraying the deep-rooted feelings of loyalty and pride that young men especially derived from their shared identity. But the crimes they committed in the service of this identity were gruesome, as the authors adeptly illustrate, and with the investigation’s stakes building ever higher both publicly and privately, Santini and his team became increasingly determined to finally punish those responsible.
A suspenseful, informative take on an ambitious criminal investigation.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5381-1563-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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