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A review by jasonfurman
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr
5.0
Wow, what a stunning book. As I read it I felt completely immersed in the seedy Boston underworld of the 1970s and 1980s and their corrupt relationship of gangsters and the FBI, whenever the present interrupted it took a moment to adjust back to it.
I was initially skeptical that I would want this much detail on something where I knew the general arc of the story (FBI gets Whitey Bulger as an informant, protects him in exchange, eventually it all comes to light, he flees, and they eventually track him down). Boy was I wrong: each and every detail was fascinating in its own right. At times it read like a thriller. But even more impressive is how it portrays the evolution of the four main characters: John Connolly the FBI agent who grew up with Whitey Bulger in Southie and protected him mostly as a result of boyhood feelings and the glamour associated a charismatic local boy; John Morris another FBI agent who was drawn into petty corruption, a few thousand dollars here and there, and only eventually rose above it; Steve Flemmi a brutal mobster at the intersection of the Irish and Italian gangs who actually did more informing than Bulger; and finally Whitey Bulger who is portrayed not as a "good bad guy" but someone who pushes drugs and murders women.
The authors did an impressive job pulling together an authoritative account with an enormous amount of detail--much of it relying on the extensive detail uncovered and documented by a series of Federal judges. We learn more about Morris's and Flemmi's thinking because they both testified extensively while Connolly and Bulger are a little more distant which is a shame but not something the authors could remedy (and in the case of one of them, can never be remedied).
I was initially skeptical that I would want this much detail on something where I knew the general arc of the story (FBI gets Whitey Bulger as an informant, protects him in exchange, eventually it all comes to light, he flees, and they eventually track him down). Boy was I wrong: each and every detail was fascinating in its own right. At times it read like a thriller. But even more impressive is how it portrays the evolution of the four main characters: John Connolly the FBI agent who grew up with Whitey Bulger in Southie and protected him mostly as a result of boyhood feelings and the glamour associated a charismatic local boy; John Morris another FBI agent who was drawn into petty corruption, a few thousand dollars here and there, and only eventually rose above it; Steve Flemmi a brutal mobster at the intersection of the Irish and Italian gangs who actually did more informing than Bulger; and finally Whitey Bulger who is portrayed not as a "good bad guy" but someone who pushes drugs and murders women.
The authors did an impressive job pulling together an authoritative account with an enormous amount of detail--much of it relying on the extensive detail uncovered and documented by a series of Federal judges. We learn more about Morris's and Flemmi's thinking because they both testified extensively while Connolly and Bulger are a little more distant which is a shame but not something the authors could remedy (and in the case of one of them, can never be remedied).