A riveting, sensational, unforgettable autobiography.
A sister’s incriminating memoir exposing her abusive upbringing and a brother’s felonious misdeeds.
Former Dutch criminal lawyer Holleeder, who wrote her unsparing memoir in complete secrecy, retraces the history behind the notoriously ruthless past of her gangster kingpin brother Willem (aka Wim). She compellingly recounts the first coldblooded attempt on her brother-in-law Cor van Hout’s life, then flashes back through a miserably dysfunctional childhood with three other siblings, all tormented by an abusive “megalomaniac” father in a brutish household where “crying was forbidden.” Despite her father’s tyrannical rule, Wim emerged as the greatest source of familial horror as the family became “worn out by the terror that had passed from father to son.” Wim was implicated alongside van Hout in the 1983 kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, and both served lengthy jail sentences. But Wim’s reign of crime was just beginning. Fresh out of prison, unrepentant, “cold and heartless,” Wim demandingly insinuated himself into Holleeder’s and her sister Sonja’s personal lives, upending them both. In a brisk and vividly descriptive narrative, the author spares no detail as she chronicles the fearful years following an attempt on van Hout’s life, noting that subsequent attacks were sure to follow. A third assassination attempt mutilated van Hout in public as Wim also deployed a string of extortion plots and contract killings across Amsterdam. Legal proceedings and jail sentences followed, while a frustrated Holleeder kept seeing her brother released to continue his reign of Mafia-style crime. Processing feelings of guilt and betrayal while clearly risking her life, the author began cooperating with the Justice Department. She testified against Wim and then visited him in prison wearing a recording device to pick up his confession to orchestrating van Hout’s murder. Currently in hiding as the case proceeds, Holleeder has written a harrowing, courageous account of murder and family loyalty while sacrificing her career and her identity in the process.
A riveting, sensational, unforgettable autobiography.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-47530-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
