Boston Herald reporter Carr tracks a pair of Beantown siblings
along a twisted trail of extortion, graft, murder and other crimes
that overran even the FBI. Making it clear that he will not be
unduly obsessed with journalistic objectivity here, the author
describes his behavior during Billy Bulger's testimony at a 2003
congressional hearing: "In full view of the CSPAN camera, I
periodically grimaced, made faces, stuck out my tongue, rolled my
eyes, and grabbed my throat when I thought Billy was being less
than forthcoming." Carr goes on to document that Billy's reputation
as "the good brother" was as misleading as his congressional
testimony. He follows Billy's ascent from Boston's notorious
Southie neighborhood (which he served in the Massachusetts House of
Representatives to his eventual presidency at the University of
Massachusetts. Big brother Whitey Bulger was in Carr's estimation a
fulltime, nonpareil crook, possibly the model for the hit man in
George V. Higgins's celebrated Boston crime novel, The Friends of
Eddie Coyle. For nearly three decades, the author contends, Billy
worked inside the system while Whitey worked outside the law; the
crux of Carr's thesis is that they cooperated in buying and
corrupting whomever they could not intimidate or, in Whitey's case,
permanently remove. Among those bought, the author asserts, was FBI
agent Zip Connolly, another Southie boy; it was a congressional
investigation of corruption in the Boston office of the FBI that
finally cost Billy his job at UMass. Billy's eventual disgrace
tainted an associated host of Boston political hacks and
bureaucrats, but he still draws a state pension; Whitey remains at
large, reportedly sighted in locales as disparate as Thailand and
Portugal. A classic, seamy portrait of widespread moral turpitude,
conveyed with crackling Boston-Irish sarcasm. (Kirkus Reviews)
The riveting New York Times bestseller by award-winning columnist
Howie Carr--now with a stunning new afterword detailing Whitey
Bulger's capture. For years their familiar story was of two
siblings who took different paths out of South Boston: William
"Billy" Bulger, former president of the Massachusetts State Senate;
and his brother James "Whitey" Bulger, a vicious criminal who
became the FBI's second most-wanted man after Osama Bin Laden.
While Billy cavorted with the state's blue bloods to become a
powerful political force, Whitey blazed a murderous trail to the
top rung of organized crime. Now, in this compelling narrative,
Carr uncovers a sinister world of FBI turncoats, alliances between
various branches of organized crime, St. Patrick's Day shenanigans,
political infighting, and the complex relationship between two
brothers who were at one time kings. As the film Black Mass,
starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger, hits theaters, take a deeper
dive into the story of the Bulgers, and their fifty-year reign over
Boston with Howie Carr's The Brother's Bulger.
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