A riveting reminder of the high cost of justice being served in a place where the supposedly good guys were...
Two veteran Chicago reporters spin a searing tale of mobster crime and official corruption, vividly detailing how a witness for the prosecution sees his life fall apart when pay-offs pervert the judicial system.
As much a cautionary tale about the realities of the Witness Protection Program as a gripping narrative of pervasive corruption, Possley and Kogan first review the history of the Chicago Mafia and its continuing power even in the 1970s and ’80s. The authors then introduce the two protagonists, Harry Aleman, a mob hit man and model father, and Bob Lowe, a working man devoted to his family, who happened to witness a murder. In 1972, on Chicago’s West Side, on his way to visit neighbor Billy Logan, who was interested in buying Lowe’s dog Ginger, Bob saw a car idling in the street and then, as Billy emerged from his house, shots were fired, and he saw Billy die. As Ginger bounded to the car, Bob followed and there saw Harry with a gun. Bob, escaping further gunshots, ran away. Though his father counseled him not to, Bob insisted on going to the police and there identified Harry from a book of mugshots. Nothing happened, but in 1976, an Assistant State Attorney, concerned with the rising number of gangland slayings, decided to prosecute Harry. The police tracked down Bob, who again offered to testify. He was now advised, with his wife Fran and their children, to adopt new names and enter the Witness Protection Program—a bumblingly executed and insensitive exercise that nearly destroyed the family as they were repeatedly forced to move and Bob found he couldn’t get work. Bob appeared in court, was humiliated by the aggressive defense, and in a glaring miscarriage of justice, watched as Harry went free. While mob money and muscle protected Harry over the next 20 years, Bob became an alcoholic, served time himself, recovered, and in 1997 testified as Harry was again tried for the murder of Billy Logan.
A riveting reminder of the high cost of justice being served in a place where the supposedly good guys were indistinguishable from the villains.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14810-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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