Black Mass

This past week I read Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neil. You might know about this, especially if you lived in New England, but it's really a hell of a story. Basically what happened is that an Irish American Boston-based FBI agent from Southie named John Connolly hooked up with a Irish American Boston-based gangster from Southie named Whitey Bulger, and together they crippled the mafia in Boston, leaving Bulger to rule the streets in partnership with friends in the FBI who protected him and even helped get some people killed.

Then the really wild, can't make this stuff up, part is that the gangster's brother was both pals with the FBI agent in question and President of the Massachusetts State Senate.

Unfortunately, while the authors have a great story to tell, they don't do a great job of telling. They're two of the Boston Globe reporters who helped break this story open originally, and they're obviously formidable reporters. They're not, however, great at narrative pacing or structuring a book. Nor do they have a really good ear for what aspects of the story do and don't require further elaboration and context. Little things -- like the fact that the Boston FBI field office covers all of New England, that the South End and South Boston are different places, etc. -- aren't really explained properly and I wound up needing to look various things up online to really understand what was happening. Ideally, then, one would want to read a different, better book on the subject and I see that there is another one thought I have no idea if it's better.

Comments

If the other book was penned by Howie Carr I don't think we can presume excellence.

Posted by Dave | July 25, 2007 3:49 PM

This truly was one of the most remarkable stories in the history of...well, whatever, American gangsterism? The ease with which Bulger corrupted the FBI and turned it to his purposes is amazing. An argument against allowing law enforcement bureaucracies a lot of freedom to ignore immediate crimes in the name of cultivating "informers", etc.

This is such rich Hollywood material, where's the movie? I initially thought the Departed might somehow be related to it, but there was no connection.

I don't think they ever found out if there was any active criminal connection there was between Billy and Whitey.

Posted by mq | July 25, 2007 3:55 PM

Whitey was a total legend. He had to be something of the model of the Nicholson character in The Departed. Its a great story. It deserves a great story teller. Sorry about your description of the book. If you want to get a sense of the Boston mob, pols, etc. read the great George V. Higgins -- the man who taught Leonard Elmore how to write dialog. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is his most famous and he died before the whole Bolger brother/FBI alliance came to light, but Higgins makes all the Boston criminals come to life.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | July 25, 2007 3:56 PM

Sorry -- taught Elmore Leonard dialog. Lenny Elmore was a Terp (and a Knick).

Posted by Peter Driscoll | July 25, 2007 3:59 PM

Howie Carr is also a local legend. He started out as a total gadfly, muckraking reporter, and a damned good one. He's morphed, however, into a conservative talk show host, though unlike most he keeps his show pretty local. He's often entertaining and always self-aggrandizing. He's also a bigot, which totally turns me off.

I've not read the book, but it's sure to be written in Carr's unmistakable tabloid style. He knows more about Whitey and Billy than probably just a handful of folks in Boston, since he covered them doggedly (he claims Whitey tried to have him killed - maybe it's even true!) but I'd be afraid his self-aggrandizing tendencies might color the narrative just a wee bit.

Posted by Jeff | July 25, 2007 4:07 PM

I can't stand Carr's column (his National Magazine Award days are well behind him), but I read and enjoyed Brothers Bulger. His politics aren't too annoying in the book (he hates Billy, Whitey and the FBI equally, which seems fair given the case.)

Anyway, the book itself is fast-paced, although it never takes off the way it would with a truly gifted long-form writer.

I've never read Black Mass, so I can't compare the two. But I do know that Brothers Bulger sold a lot better.

Posted by jerry | July 25, 2007 4:18 PM

Sounds a lot like Showtime's Brotherhood.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | July 25, 2007 4:35 PM

Quick read Black Mass by John Gray next before read anything else. Most of it you already know but it is pretty good and the opportunity to read two Black Masses only will probably happen every few years.

Posted by Felipe | July 25, 2007 4:37 PM

I know a woman from Boston who read Black Mass and starting listing off all the people in the book who she grew up with. Apparently there were a lot of Irish gangsters-in-training in her math class.

Posted by Reality Man | July 25, 2007 4:37 PM

i wanted to make the same point as peter driscoll: you actually could kinda make most of this up (or, to put it another way, this kind of thing didn't begin with whitey and connolly), because Higgins did. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, for instance, captures a fair amount of this very milieu (complete with a character who foreshadows stephen the rifleman flemmi).

Posted by howard | July 25, 2007 4:46 PM

the gangster's brother was both pals with the FBI agent in question and President of the Massachusetts State Senate.

... and after retiring from the State Senate, in lieu of a gold watch he was given the University of Massachusetts system, which he was still president of when I was in grad school there 5-6 years ago. His tenure was a complete disaster with massive disinvestment in the flagship Amherst campus, whole departments axed, etc. by the end the guy wouldn't even show up -- except very occasionally, unannounced, with heavy security -- because of the level of hostility to him there. I don't think you can blame either the FBI or the Mob for that, tho.

Whitey's still at large, right? -- supposed to be in Ireland, where he enjoys long walks on the beach with his girlfriend and a big knife.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | July 25, 2007 5:11 PM

The last time I remember reading about Whitey Bulger in the paper was when he won $14m in the Mass state lottery a few years back. Man, those were good times...

Posted by Adam | July 25, 2007 5:27 PM

University of Massachusetts system, which he was still president of when I was in grad school there 5-6 years ago.

Bulger got there the year I left UMass, 1996. Perfect timing on my part, I guess.

Posted by RSA | July 25, 2007 5:32 PM

... and after retiring from the State Senate

Over a year after his brother made the transition from ostensibly wanted but protected mob boss to "out and out fugitive".

Whitey's still at large, right? -- supposed to be in Ireland, where he enjoys long walks on the beach with his girlfriend and a big knife.

"Where's Whitey?" as the joke went when I was growing up. Well, he's been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list since 1999. I think you're right that he spends most of his time abroad these days, but for much of the time that he's been "missing" he, well, wasn't really missing. Plenty of stories from friendly Southie ladies like "Where's Whitey, they always say, but I see him all the time on my way to mass!"

Posted by Quarterican | July 25, 2007 5:36 PM

Right, I covered this Whitey Bulger story in my review of The Departed in The American Conservative, pointing out it helps make The Departed richer than its Hong Kong source, Infernal Affairs:

"The effectiveness of "The Departed" starts with Boston-born novelist William Monahan's screenplay, with its despair over the bloody-mindedness and its pride in the courage of the city's Irish. While the Chinese film's plot seems like a clever but abstract conceit, here it's a window into a notoriously concussion-centric culture. Indeed, Monahan is clearly influenced by the 1975-1990 scandal in which FBI agent John Connolly recruited as an informant a childhood friend from a housing project in Southie (the most notorious white underclass neighborhood in America), mobster Whitey Bulger, only to end up assisting the hit man's lethal rise to the top of Boston's Irish mafia."

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 25, 2007 6:58 PM

Sailer, you don't talk about my hometown and I don't talk about your trailer, deal?

"Whitey's still at large, right? -- supposed to be in Ireland, where he enjoys long walks on the beach with his girlfriend and a big knife."

Supposedly he also likes dogs and tips well when he's not garroting somebody.

Posted by Reality Man | July 25, 2007 7:42 PM

I don't know where the rest of Whitey is but I have his hands if anyone wants to use them.

Posted by Jackie Flannery | July 25, 2007 9:27 PM

I've read the Howie Carr book and must say it is pretty damn compelling considering its author is a blowhard tabloid journalist. Perhaps the book by Whitey henchman Kevin Weeks "Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob" would balance out the other two, written by Boston Globe & Herald scribes, respectively. That said, Carr's book did recount some extraordinary anecdotes of the Bulger brothers' antics. After getting hooked on this stranger than fiction tale, I won't ever look at Massachusetts -- and especially Boston, where I went to college -- the same way again...

Posted by NYSoxfan | July 25, 2007 10:42 PM

Just to note that if you have more familiarity with Hong Kong then you'll still find more richness in Infernal Affairs than in The Departed. I guess it would take a critic who knows Boston as well as Hong Kong (I know them both, but not, perhaps in the required depth) to judge between them.

Posted by Meh | July 26, 2007 5:31 AM

Howie Carr was raised on the mean streets of Deerfield Academy. His book relies heavily on the argument by juxtaposition. Its loaded with the innuendo that he really knows more than he can say - which is a decent summary of what has been in the papers - when he actually knows less. Sully and Sully on the next barstools can tell you all kinds of stories which may or may not be true, but they, unlike Howie, are in a position to know.

Posted by snoey | July 26, 2007 7:12 AM

Sailer, you don't talk about my hometown and I don't talk about your trailer, deal?

It's funny how progressives, erstwhile champions of 'the underprivileged', suddenly sound like the biggest snobs imaginable when it comes to those who violate their racial fatwas.

Posted by Random Lurker | July 26, 2007 7:47 AM

Are there really that many people who are both interested in this book and don't know the difference between the trendy, gay South End and Irish Southie?

And South Boston is a notorious white underclass? Really? Even the Irish bits of Dorchester (my birthplace) aren't really comparable to, say, rural South Carolina, are they? Southie Boys pretty much control Boston public services.

Posted by cure | July 26, 2007 9:53 AM

Speaking of which, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner this morning entered an award of $101 million in damages against the Feds (read: John Connolly's FBI) for not disclosing information that allowed four men to be framed for a murder.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/07/judge_to_issue.html

Posted by Rod Hoffman | July 26, 2007 11:21 AM

When the case was being investigated by Judge Wolf there were really good write-ups in the globe by the authors. It was an amazing investigation.

My co-workers laughed at me because I would begin the day searching the Globe's web site for the latest installment.

My interest was piqued because I knew of Connolley when he was hired as a director (i.e. reporting directly to a senior VP) at the company in my prior job (Boston Edison, now NStar). At the time none of us lower level types could figure out exactly what they guy was supposed to do at such high level with no organizational responsibilities.

I had since left the company, but at any event it caused a great deal of embarrassment that they hired a guy who was no better then the criminals he ran.

Anyway, Howie Carr is pretty much the local version of Rush Limbaugh. He hates Democrats with a passion, so I wouldn't be surprised if he has lots of negative things to say about Billy Bulger that aren't particularly fact-based. You should take what he says with a grain of salt, because as you are well aware by now that conservatives aren't the most honest bunch around. Also, Billy Bulger was one of the few real natural politicians you would ever find, so this of course is a giant black mark against hime for conservatives like Carr.

Posted by ESaund | July 26, 2007 1:55 PM