MICKEY COHEN: In My Own Words

Mickey Cohen's fifteen-year prison term for tax evasion effectively removed one of the most flamboyant--and powerful--underworld figures from public consciousness. This autobiography, assisted by John Peer Nugent, should provide a brief reprise (for anyone who wants it) of the '40's and '50's, when Cohen reigned on the West Coast and corruption, despite a limited vocabulary, had class. Cohen tells almost all as he explains, there's no statute of limitations on murder): his involvement with Bugsy Siegel, with the stars (Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Lana Turner, et al.); with Fates Kefauver, Bobby Kennedy, Dick Nixon, and, in a coda of some kind, with the recent search for Patty Hearst. The book reads like the unedited script of an old gangster film, just flagrant enough to be good, as long as you don't take it too seriously. Take, for example, Cohen's remark about Eddie Nealis, once a Sunset Strip night club owner: ""I know he died naturally, otherwise I would have heard about it.