The Brother's Bulger, a review

Monday, October 01, 2007

Don't kill me Whitey
Malach has just finished reading The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century by Howie Carr. Pretty good book, if you like non-fiction style mafia stuff. First, I must stress, I am not a fan of Howie Carr. The book does suffer from Carr's opinion in a number of places. Carr is a right wing conservative and throughout the book, a number of time he makes the democrat/republican thing too black and white, and often shades the right with the cloak of righteousness. That aside, the book gives you and excellent insight into MA State politics of the 70's, 80's, and 90's under the control of Billy Bulger, and the parallels of James "Whitey" Bulger rise into being the kingpin of Boston crime during the same time period.

Now if you are not familiar with the Bulgers, I will give you a brief on each, with a link to Wikipedia for more in depth. Billy Bulger is a life long Boston Politician who was President of the MA State Senate for more than 25 years. Bulger held unprecedented power in that position, perhaps more than the Governor, and he used it, to line his pockets, line his friends pockets, ruin careers, and possibly commit crimes. You can read a pretty good article about him here.

Now Whitey. Whitey is currently an on the run fugitive, on the Top 10 most wanted FBI list, along with the likes of Osama bin Laden. Whitey became the most powerful person in Boston Organized crime in those 25 years. He used a incredible system of crooked cops, federal agents, and used his status as an FBI informant, to systematically wipe out all his competition, and commit crimes right under the nose of state and federal investigators. He is currently wanted to RICO charges, narcotics charges, and number of murder charges to name a few. Whitey was so good he even won the lottery in a crooked way in the early '90's. There is a good article about him here.

Carr did pretty amazing job getting all sort of true inside dirt on the Bulgers and their associates without getting killed. The book is a excellent read on straight information and how the Bulgers did what they did for as long as they did, without facing prosecution. It details the level of corruption throughout the state government and how even Republican governors bowed to the will of the Bulgers (To give Mitt Romney some credit, being an outsider, he did finally get rid of Bulger).

If you like true crime, you will like this book. If you live in MA, you will like it even more. And Angry Piper, you are more than welcome to republish this review at your website.

I am Malach and I can read . . now.