GANGSTER SQUAD: COVERT COPS, THE MOB, AND THE BATTLE FOR PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Paul Lieberman | 549 pages | 07 Aug 2012 | St. Martin's Press | 9781250027856 | English | Gangster Squad (LAPD) - Wikipedia

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Preview — Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman. The true story behind the movie of the same name. In , the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. About all they had in common was their obsession. Two cops -- two hoodlums. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published August 7th by St. Martin's Griffin first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Gangster Squad , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Nov 18, Amanda Patterson rated it it was ok. Warner Brothers developed the film Gangster Squad based on the research journalist Paul Lieberman conducted for this book. The problem is the policemen concerned aren't that interesting. Decent dedicated Warner Brothers developed the film Gangster Squad based on the research journalist Paul Lieberman conducted for this book. Decent dedicated law men having dinner do not make a riveting read. He writes about the LA Mafia, but the characters, , , and others, are almost as boring as the men watching them. There is a lack of focus and conflict. Nothing much happens. View 1 comment. Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secret police unit that was assembled to wage war against Mickey Cohen and any other hoodlums in Los Angeles. In the LAPD created this squad to take down Cohen and clean up the streets by any means necessary. Lasting about four years this war lead to an aftermath that shocks both the LA mob and the police department but ultimately ensuring the mob will never have a foot hold on this city ever again. I recently saw the very loosely based movie a Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secret police unit that was assembled to wage war against Mickey Cohen and any other hoodlums in Los Angeles. I recently saw the very loosely based movie adaptation of this true novel and it left me curious to know more about this squad and the life of Mickey Cohen. So I went out and read the book; while it was very story driven, the novel did get rather dry about half way through. I love books about organised crime and I was happy to learn more about the infamous Jewish mobster and his downfall. But with all true crime and non-fiction books, I remain sceptical of the research. I always read these books and wonder just how much is researched and how much is just pure speculation, I think in this aspect I prefer the fictionalised novels of true events; that way I know for sure it is just their take on the events. As for the book, it read like a novel at the beginning but then I think the author realised we was writing True Crime and tried to over correct himself because it became really dry and clinical. All added a picture perfect snapshot of the real LA noir. There is a lot of re-read value without a doubt. Well, this was entertaining. I guess. Shady cops and shady thugs in shady LA. Nothing new. Dec 22, Ruth rated it it was amazing. I adore film noir -- the shadow-drenched films of the 40s and 50s that brought to life a world inhabited by gangsters, femme fatales, and hard-boiled private eyes, double-crosses and shoot-outs, a murky cinematic world where the line between good and evil was more often than not blurred beyond recognition. The first time I heard of the upcoming film Gangster Squad was in the aftermath of the Aurora, CO theater shooting, when the trailer was pulled due to the fact that it contained sce 4. The first time I heard of the upcoming film Gangster Squad was in the aftermath of the Aurora, CO theater shooting, when the trailer was pulled due to the fact that it contained scenes of a movie theater shoot-out the sequence was subsequently cut and a new scene shot to take its place. I assumed the story was a fiction -- until I saw the trailer just over a week ago and absolutely fell in love with the look of the film. Generally speaking gangster pictures are a bit out of my viewing norm, but I am a total sucker for the look of the 40s and 50s and whatever else may be said about the upcoming film -- it has style in spades. And oh what a wild ride -- if nothing else Gangster Squad more than proves the old adage that the truth is stranger, and oft-times more compelling, than any fiction. Journalist Paul Lieberman's plus page account of the LAPD's Gangster Squad is a highly readable, page-turning account of the men whose shadowy crusade against the rise of organized crime in their city arguably changed the face of law enforcement forever. The Los Angeles of the early twentieth-century was a city on the cusp of great and profound change. With the rise of the film industry, LA was becoming an entertainment mecca -- and during the Depression years thousands sought their fortunes under California's sun-drenched skies. The advent of World War II brought a serious population boom to LA, as the city quickly swelled to become one of the top five most populated cities in America. But along with the burgeoning entertainment and industrial sectors came imports of a less desirable sort -- gangsters like Siegel and Mickey Cohen who sought to establish gaming and protection racket empires of their own, set to rival their eastern counterparts in Chicago and New York. And thus ten-Chief C. Horrall greenlit the formation of the Gangster Squad, the elite, off-the-books, virtually invisible team was hand-picked for their brawn or their brains, and their willingness to completely dedicate themselves to ridding LA of the invading gangster menace. What is perhaps most amazing about the Gangster Squad is the virtually unquestioned autonomy they were given in their assignment to investigate, tail, and harass the gangster element. Initially their only offices were two beat-up sedans wherein meetings were scheduled on shadowy corners and in vacant lots via coded messages. Since they weren't officially recognized at least in the first years , they were given free rein to use any method at their disposal to clean up LA's streets -- unwarranted wire taps, their fists -- if a bookie or pimp was "encouraged" to leave town it was tallied a win, no matter the circumstances. In , Walsh had a dinner with friends, later dubbed his "death supper. The money was handed over to an anonymous guy in Boston who "[slipped] his hand through a hotel room door. Court TV's Crime Library reports an inquiry held after Walsh's disappearance failed to figure out what happened. One rumor was that he'd been buried on his own farm, another said his body was "stuffed into a barrel of cement," and dumped in the ocean. For decades, any suspicious corpse was compared to Walsh's dental records, but they never matched. By the time he was 16, Fredrick Tenuto already had a criminal record, according to The Mafia Encyclopedia. But his continuous trips to prison weren't that big a deal to him, because Tenuto was extremely good at breaking out. While he wasn't an important mobster, Tenuto got the nickname "Angel of Death" because he was a go-to guy if you wanted a hit done. But his carelessness would be his downfall. Albert Anastasia was a mafia don and properly insane. His answer to everything was violence and . When a man named Arnold Schuster did his civic duty and turned in a bank robber in , says Anastasia announced he hated squealers, and ordered Schuster killed. The job fell to Tenuto. The Angel of Death did the deed in the open on a New York Street, and there was at least one witness. When Anastasia heard his triggerman had been seen, he panicked. Tenuto could be connected to him, so he ordered his hit man killed to clean up the messy situation. Tenuto vanished, almost certainly because he'd been murdered, but his body was never found. Weinberg rose to be his right hand man, personally killing many of Schultz's competitors, and running his empire when Schultz went on the run to avoid tax evasion charges, according to Hollywood Most Wanted. He liked his money and power, and if his boss fell, he risked losing it all. So Weinberg conspired with rival , giving the other mob boss tips on how to bring down his current don in exchange for "a healthy cut of any future action. On September 9, , Weinberg left a friend's house, got in a car, and was never seen again. While one story says Schultz killed his Judas "with his bare hands," it's the more common tale of his murder that went down in history. After being beaten almost senseless, Weinberg's feet were encased in cement and he was dumped in the East River while still alive. Vice says that this was where the Mafia stereotypes of "cement shoes" and "sleeping with the fishes" originates from, and it may very well have happened to Weinberg, even if they never did it again. America wasn't the only place that banned alcohol for awhile. Ontario also got in on the not-fun with the Temperance Act of , which was pretty much a blanket ban against booze. That meant you got assumedly very polite northern gangsters involved in bootlegging. The Star reports that one night in , Perri, the "patriarch of the mob," was on the scene as more than 2, bottles of whiskey were unloaded from a boat. The cops busted him, but Perri swore he was just in the area and had nothing to do with it. The charges were eventually dropped. A year later, he wasn't so shy about his work. In , Perri confessed his illegal activities to a reporter, and his wife called him the "king of the bootleggers. On April 23, , Perri got a headache while visiting a cousin. He went for a walk to try and shake it, saying he'd be back by lunch. He never returned. There's a theory that he was murdered by underworld rivals for control of his territory and dumped in Hamilton Harbour, but there is some evidence he might have learned about a plot to kill him and fled. Perri's biographer claims to have proof he lived in Massena, N. Canada has a surprisingly active and violent underworld, and Paolo Renda was right in the middle of it. Renda married Rizzuto's daughter and got heavily involved in the family business, including handling the finances. Renda had numerous run-ins with the law. The Globe and Mail reports that in he was convicted of arson, saw him arrested in a huge mob raid, and in , he pleaded guilty to "two counts of possessing profits from organized crime. A rival gang began fighting them for power, sending messages that included kidnapping Rizzuto's gangsters , who would later reappear safe and sound. That wasn't the case for Renda. On May 20, , while he was on conditional release from jail, construction workers saw a black car with a removable siren on top pulled the gangster over. Two men posing as plainclothes police officers bundled him into their car. His wife discovered Renda's SUV abandoned with the keys still in the ignition. The real police thought the hit might have been part of a vendetta dating back to the s. Normally it takes seven years to declare someone dead when they vanish, but Global News says Renda's wife tried to get closure in Gangster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles by Paul Lieberman

I do with a character list, index, and bibliography were included -- the foremost particularly since due to the scope of the history and Lieberman's not exactly linear storytelling it can be difficult to keep the players straight. That aside, for those intrigued by this tumultuous time period Gangster Squad is a fast-placed, not-to-be-missed thrill ride -- an absorbing and thought-provoking window into an explosive period of American history. Dec 31, Brittany rated it liked it. This is a tough one to review. I love true crime, even more so I love film-noir. This true account of gangsters, notably Mickey Cohen in LA in the 40's and 50's teetered on that film-noir feel throughout its entirety. While balancing the facts with their relative excitement, I understand there is a great deal of ground and fascinating men for Lieberman to cover, so it's not always in fact, hardly at all the action-packed, crime drama you see in the trailer for Warner Bros. This I can handle, I would always prefer a realistic account of curious and even unsolved events to a dramatized, speculative and Hollywood approach to the past. My beef with Lieberman, is that he writes as though he is giving a fictionalized version of events. The pages are riddled with characters who are drawn to hypnotize you and then dropped suddenly, as well as cliche sayings that you would expect to come from Philip Marlowe like, "Nothing is certain in police work, or in life C'mon Lieberman, tell it to me straight! I will say though, that while I hope the movie keeps me more entertained, the final 50 pages of the book afterword included made the whole thing entirely worthwhile. The movie and the book make almost at the same time but are totally diferent one of each other. I like that only for once that the characters were make like the real life. But that's not the reality This is a book really slow,and is write in 3rth person so the action scens not feel like if you will witness. Make that you realize how the time pass and how the people change in real life not as in a invented story. Jun 11, Myles Nester rated it it was ok. An interesting story, poorly told. The book is adapted from a series of newspaper articles and it feels like it. There is little narrative flow or focus over its page length, and the editorial discipline to stick to the subject is sorely lacking. However, it is a study of a fascinating time, where gangsters where stars and the police were hopelessly ill equipped to deal with organised crime. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of An interesting story, poorly told. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of Chicago's more famous characters. It is hard to recommend tho because it never really builds these stories into a book. As a contrast Public Enemies, which focuses on the loose society of bank robbers in the pre-war era, is a much more successful attempt at taking a collection of cops and robbers and turning it into a real page turner. If you have a keen interest in the american underworld, its worth picking up a copy but there's nothing here for anyone but the enthusiasts. View all 3 comments. Enjoyed listening to this story of LA's . Tale of how they "took down" Mickey Cohen. This was the basis for the movie Gangster Squad. The story of the squad was interesting but I felt like it went on a little long. However, I felt like there was a saving grace in the audio version at least in that there was an interview with the author as a sort of afterword. He talked about how he found out about the unit and got the surviving members to talk to him, especially since most of them d Enjoyed listening to this story of LA's gangster squad. He talked about how he found out about the unit and got the surviving members to talk to him, especially since most of them didn't really want to very much. Most of it I listened to on my way home from Christmas and then I had to check it out of the library again to finish it. The Bug Man-Phelps. Although the movie is not the same as what really happened, the book is much closer to the truth. He was the " Bug Man" Phelps. I am Proud of the fact that at the times when things were going so wrong, that my father not only worked hard for the Police to not only fix the , but to Help make the LA Police Department Do better as well. I wish i could post the pictures i have, of the real story of this whole Gang Although the movie is not the same as what really happened, the book is much closer to the truth. Jan 01, Christal rated it it was ok. Not enough Ryan Gosling. There were some interesting insights provided by this book. Ask me to be specific and I'm unsure if I could furnish you with the details of a single one. Because of the writing style. To begin with, the writing is in the style of the kind of noir fiction popularised in recent times by the likes of . Lieberman in fact seems to make a lot of references to the noir style in this, making me think that this is the style to which he truly aspires to. It may be to some people's taste b There were some interesting insights provided by this book. It may be to some people's taste but I just think with a text such as this, interesting information on how the characters lived their lives would be far more enlightening. There were various other issues. Lieberman had the unendearing trait of revealing what he was about to write in the next chapter, destroying any suspense or wonder at how events might pan out. Not good. But the main problem was the fact that he seemed to focus on the banal. I'm not sure if this was due to a dearth of material for the book or what, but telling me the life histories of many, many, many insignificant characters in minute detail added nothing to the story. The main protagonist Mickey Cohen and antagonist Jack O'Mara were the only ones we needed to know about in detail. Maybe Jerry Wooters as well, at a push. Lieberman described the lives of EVERYONE in the book, trading his desire to do this against the need for the reader to know about the main characters. As a result, I felt that I knew far too little about Cohen by the end of the book. If you have plenty of time, give this a read. But there are hugely superior gangster books Murder Machine, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, to name a few that will give far better insight into the lives and times of these guys. Sep 29, Remi rated it it was amazing Shelves: owned. Absolutely loved every minute of this book. The people are so fascinating and so quotable and they aren't even characters in a novel, they're real people! I'm on a true crime book spree because of books like this! I don't expect the movie to be very good, especially with all of the changes they're making to it in light of the Batman shootings but I'll watch anyway just to see it with the open eyes of someone who read the book that inspired it. Dec 25, Justin Robinson rated it liked it. The cheeseball style was entertaining at first, but over the course of pages gradually wore out its welcome. Worse, it obscured some of the facts it was trying to convey. There are much better histories of Los Angeles of the time. Dec 17, Trent Zelazny rated it really liked it. Very well researched, put together, and executed. Will be interesting to see how much from the book actually made it into the upcoming movie. Aug 28, Tracey rated it really liked it. While this is not a suspenseful movie script, it is a well researched history of the first law enforcement agency to target organized crime in the United States. The audiobook presentation added color to the distinct voices of the witness interviews collected by the author. However, I enjoyed the theme carried beyond the voices of the witnesses. I also appreciated learnin While this is not a suspenseful movie script, it is a well researched history of the first law enforcement agency to target organized crime in the United States. I also appreciated learning about what happened to the major players decades after the dust of the turf wars settled. Mar 07, Thomas rated it liked it Shelves: history , crime , true-crime , organized-crime , los-angeles. I was really disappointed by this book. It felt scattered and disjointed to me. It also did a lot of cheerleading bad police behavior. Morally, that is what it is; perhaps more importantly, it's boring to me. Hearing about how tough cops are is fine for a couple of pages, but it was an awful lot of this book, with a predictably repetitive result. Remember that this is the squad that inspired L. How did the author make that boring? A book I liked better, on a closely related theme, I was really disappointed by this book. A book I liked better, on a closely related theme, was L. Secret Police by Mike Rothmiller. Sep 03, Ed rated it liked it. A history of the mafia or what passed for the mafia in Los Angeles CA. The book jumped around a bit at the beginning setting the stages for later in the book. Sometimes the book felt like a bunch of short stories wrapped into a compilation. However, overall the book gives some history of a side of the police force and the mafia from the 's that is rarely seen. It was entertaining though it does have a bit of profanity in it. Mind you nothing more than any police officer will hear from collea A history of the mafia or what passed for the mafia in Los Angeles CA. Mind you nothing more than any police officer will hear from colleagues and on the job daily. Oct 05, Kevin Koppelmann rated it really liked it. It was cool to see the differences and connections between the East and West coast gangsters. The information on the cops helped to show a little more realistic everyday life to the book. Nov 28, Adriano Ariganello rated it liked it. It's told in an entertaining way, but is a little scattered in its focus. At times, it seems like it's a book about LA and its problems with crime. Other times, it's about Mickey Cohen exclusively. It doesn't tie together in the end, so it makes it all feel pretty tangential. Apr 02, Beth rated it it was amazing. Stranger than fiction! A fascinating account spanning two decades of aggressive, invasive, innovating policing thanks in no small part to a number of now illegal tactics Sep 25, Cee Martinez rated it it was amazing. Really well written and engrossing book on the Gangster Squad and their battles against Mickey Cohen in the 40s and 50s. A lot of interesting and funny anecdotes are included as well as thorough research and interviews with survivors and family members involved in the time period. Apr 23, Robin rated it it was ok Shelves: dnf. There is no such scene in Lieberman's book, hence the "loosely" based appellation. The movie is now scheduled to be released in January, following some reshooting no pun intended. Founded in , the real life "Gangster Squad" spent much of its time in surveillance, wire tapping legal and otherwise and harassing Mickey Cohen and other criminal types, both local and visiting. They used Mulholland Drive to frighten crime figures, but never tossed anyone off a cliff. After he retired from the LAPD, one of the members of the squad, Gerard "Jerry" Wooters, started a home supply service business and later developed real estate in Orange County, ending up a multimillionaire. Still another one, Bert Phelps, became a superior court judge. Edgar Hoover was visiting horse tracks like Santa Anita and Hollywood Park with his pal Clyde Tolson -- and denying the existence of organized crime -- Chief Parker and his subordinate Captain James Hamilton used the eight member intelligence unit known informally as the "Gangster Squad" to compile files that even Hoover would envy on Cohen, Jimmy Fratianno, Jack Dragna, Dominick Brooklier and other mob figures in the years following the shooting death of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in Beverly Hills in The "Gangster Squad" didn't sport the dapper suits and hats of the "Hat Squad", and they drove around in battered cars and slept with Tommy guns under their beds, but they did their damnedest to root out what L. Louis, whose son Jack "The Enforcer" Whalen was an aspiring movie star and hoodlum who was a threat to Mickey Cohen's empire. There's no movie theater shooting in the book but a Dec. For Sgt. About all they had in common was their obsession with Cohen , who rose to the top of the L. Two cops -- two hoodlums. He has won dozens of journalism honors, most for investigative projects, including the Robert F. He also shared in two team Pulitzer Prizes at the L. Times , as a writer on its coverage of the Los Angeles Riots of and an editor of its reporting on the Northridge Earthquake. Jack Whalen - Wikipedia

There were no signs of foul play. Many people think he was murdered, either by his own crew for the rumors he'd snitched to the government, or by his nemesis Sarno. One mob expert says he was probably killed and his body "disposed of in a manner that would make it nearly impossible to locate. And the FBI thinks it's possible Zizzo went on the run to avoid possible prosecution. Certain occupations have reputations for being mobbed-up. But Squillante wasn't just the business side of things. That same year he was alleged to have ordered his goons to kill a guy and cut him up into tiny pieces, as reported by a later Senate committee. Being investigated by the Senate is never a good sign. It means the law is on to you. In , Squillante was indicted on extortion charges. On September 23, he was seen driving a new Chevy, then he vanished. He may have been murdered by the mob for "personal misconduct," or so he couldn't squeal at trial. While no one knows for sure what happened to him, there is a rather disturbing rumor. Thought Catalog says he was shot in the head and his body loaded into the trunk of a car. Mafia guys get nicknames, and Anthony Strollo's was the fabulous "Tony Bender. He was well-trusted, even being placed in charge of operations when his boss had to flee to Europe in the s, and he ordered more than possibly any other mobster. Being Strollo's friend didn't mean much. In once instance, Genovese made sure Strollo wasn't involved in a hit, since the target was Strollo's best friend, but Strollo "cheerfully volunteered" to help when he found out about the plans. Years later, he tried to kill another friend as well. Strollo's loyalty was just as flexible as his friendships. He tended to align himself with whomever had the most power at the time. In , he switched families and set up his old boss Genovese in a drug bust. The mob boss went to jail, where he realized Strollo had betrayed him. On April 8, , Strollo left his home, telling his wife he would only be gone a few minutes. He was never seen again. There are rumors he's under the West Side Highway, or that his body was dumped in a cement mixer and became part of a skyscraper. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia reports that when asked why Strollo's vanished, Genovese vaguely alluded to ordering his murder, saying it had been a kindness, since Strollo wouldn't have been able to handle prison. An Irish-American guy from small-town Rhode Island doesn't sound like your stereotypical gangster. But Prohibition had a way of turning even regular people into criminals. He decided this rum-running racket would be a better way to get rich, especially since there was little chance of getting in trouble for it in a state that was against Prohibition and never approved the 18th Amendment. Walsh became one of the biggest bootleggers in the US. He only had one small brush with the law over unpaid taxes, however, his new job required he get close to organized crime bosses, including "King" Charles Solomon and associates of Al Capone. This put him in danger, especially as the liquor business became more violent. In , Walsh had a dinner with friends, later dubbed his "death supper. The money was handed over to an anonymous guy in Boston who " [slipped] his hand through a hotel room door. Court TV's Crime Library reports an inquiry held after Walsh's disappearance failed to figure out what happened. One rumor was that he'd been buried on his own farm, another said his body was "stuffed into a barrel of cement," and dumped in the ocean. For decades, any suspicious corpse was compared to Walsh's dental records, but they never matched. By the time he was 16, Fredrick Tenuto already had a criminal record, according to The Mafia Encyclopedia. But his continuous trips to prison weren't that big a deal to him, because Tenuto was extremely good at breaking out. While he wasn't an important mobster, Tenuto got the nickname "Angel of Death" because he was a go-to guy if you wanted a hit done. But his carelessness would be his downfall. Albert Anastasia was a mafia don and properly insane. His answer to everything was violence and murder. When a man named Arnold Schuster did his civic duty and turned in a bank robber in , American Mafia says Anastasia announced he hated squealers, and ordered Schuster killed. The job fell to Tenuto. The Angel of Death did the deed in the open on a New York Street, and there was at least one witness. When Anastasia heard his triggerman had been seen, he panicked. Founded in , the real life "Gangster Squad" spent much of its time in surveillance, wire tapping legal and otherwise and harassing Mickey Cohen and other criminal types, both local and visiting. They used Mulholland Drive to frighten crime figures, but never tossed anyone off a cliff. After he retired from the LAPD, one of the members of the squad, Gerard "Jerry" Wooters, started a home supply service business and later developed real estate in Orange County, ending up a multimillionaire. Still another one, Bert Phelps, became a superior court judge. Edgar Hoover was visiting horse tracks like Santa Anita and Hollywood Park with his pal Clyde Tolson -- and denying the existence of organized crime -- Chief Parker and his subordinate Captain James Hamilton used the eight member intelligence unit known informally as the "Gangster Squad" to compile files that even Hoover would envy on Cohen, Jimmy Fratianno, Jack Dragna, Dominick Brooklier and other mob figures in the years following the shooting death of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in Beverly Hills in The "Gangster Squad" didn't sport the dapper suits and hats of the "Hat Squad", and they drove around in battered cars and slept with Tommy guns under their beds, but they did their damnedest to root out what L. Louis, whose son Jack "The Enforcer" Whalen was an aspiring movie star and hoodlum who was a threat to Mickey Cohen's empire. There's no movie theater shooting in the book but a Dec. For Sgt. About all they had in common was their obsession with Cohen , who rose to the top of the L. Two cops -- two hoodlums. Decent dedicated Warner Brothers developed the film Gangster Squad based on the research journalist Paul Lieberman conducted for this book. Decent dedicated law men having dinner do not make a riveting read. He writes about the LA Mafia, but the characters, Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, and others, are almost as boring as the men watching them. There is a lack of focus and conflict. Nothing much happens. View 1 comment. Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secret police unit that was assembled to wage war against Mickey Cohen and any other hoodlums in Los Angeles. In the LAPD created this squad to take down Cohen and clean up the streets by any means necessary. Lasting about four years this war lead to an aftermath that shocks both the LA mob and the police department but ultimately ensuring the mob will never have a foot hold on this city ever again. I recently saw the very loosely based movie a Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secret police unit that was assembled to wage war against Mickey Cohen and any other hoodlums in Los Angeles. I recently saw the very loosely based movie adaptation of this true crime novel and it left me curious to know more about this squad and the life of Mickey Cohen. So I went out and read the book; while it was very story driven, the novel did get rather dry about half way through. I love books about organised crime and I was happy to learn more about the infamous Jewish mobster and his downfall. But with all true crime and non-fiction books, I remain sceptical of the research. I always read these books and wonder just how much is researched and how much is just pure speculation, I think in this aspect I prefer the fictionalised novels of true events; that way I know for sure it is just their take on the events. As for the book, it read like a novel at the beginning but then I think the author realised we was writing True Crime and tried to over correct himself because it became really dry and clinical. All added a picture perfect snapshot of the real LA noir. There is a lot of re-read value without a doubt. Well, this was entertaining. I guess. Shady cops and shady thugs in shady LA. Nothing new. Dec 22, Ruth rated it it was amazing. I adore film noir -- the shadow-drenched films of the 40s and 50s that brought to life a world inhabited by gangsters, femme fatales, and hard-boiled private eyes, double-crosses and shoot-outs, a murky cinematic world where the line between good and evil was more often than not blurred beyond recognition. The first time I heard of the upcoming film Gangster Squad was in the aftermath of the Aurora, CO theater shooting, when the trailer was pulled due to the fact that it contained sce 4. The first time I heard of the upcoming film Gangster Squad was in the aftermath of the Aurora, CO theater shooting, when the trailer was pulled due to the fact that it contained scenes of a movie theater shoot-out the sequence was subsequently cut and a new scene shot to take its place. I assumed the story was a fiction -- until I saw the trailer just over a week ago and absolutely fell in love with the look of the film. Generally speaking gangster pictures are a bit out of my viewing norm, but I am a total sucker for the look of the 40s and 50s and whatever else may be said about the upcoming film -- it has style in spades. And oh what a wild ride -- if nothing else Gangster Squad more than proves the old adage that the truth is stranger, and oft-times more compelling, than any fiction. Journalist Paul Lieberman's plus page account of the LAPD's Gangster Squad is a highly readable, page-turning account of the men whose shadowy crusade against the rise of organized crime in their city arguably changed the face of law enforcement forever. The Los Angeles of the early twentieth-century was a city on the cusp of great and profound change. With the rise of the film industry, LA was becoming an entertainment mecca -- and during the Depression years thousands sought their fortunes under California's sun-drenched skies. The advent of World War II brought a serious population boom to LA, as the city quickly swelled to become one of the top five most populated cities in America. But along with the burgeoning entertainment and industrial sectors came imports of a less desirable sort -- gangsters like and Mickey Cohen who sought to establish gaming and protection racket empires of their own, set to rival their eastern counterparts in Chicago and New York. And thus ten-Chief C. Horrall greenlit the formation of the Gangster Squad, the elite, off-the-books, virtually invisible team was hand-picked for their brawn or their brains, and their willingness to completely dedicate themselves to ridding LA of the invading gangster menace. What is perhaps most amazing about the Gangster Squad is the virtually unquestioned autonomy they were given in their assignment to investigate, tail, and harass the gangster element. Initially their only offices were two beat-up sedans wherein meetings were scheduled on shadowy corners and in vacant lots via coded messages. Since they weren't officially recognized at least in the first years , they were given free rein to use any method at their disposal to clean up LA's streets -- unwarranted wire taps, their fists -- if a bookie or pimp was "encouraged" to leave town it was tallied a win, no matter the circumstances. What intrigued me most about the team was their pioneering investigative methods. Led by brilliant "bug man" Con Keeler, the squad pioneered new forms of electronic surveillance and wire tapping. And in an age when J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI refused to acknowledge the existence of an organized mafia in America, the Gangster Squad was among the first to meticulously document the network of connections between LA operatives and their east coast counterparts, building massive handwritten dossiers on targets openly operating in the shadow of the law. Lieberman's extensive exploration of the Gangster Squad's activities, its members particularly straight-arrow John O'Mara and the roguish Jerry Wooters relative to Mickey Cohen , and their targets, is a highly readable, fast-paced account of a transformative era in the history of American law enforcement. Whether or not you agree with their methodology, Gangster Squad is a fascinating examination of the lengths a group of men were willing to go to in order to stand in the gap for their family and city in peril from gangsters who regularly got away with murder. Lieberman's prose and colorful metaphors pack a punch suggestive of the likes of Chandler, bringing his history to life with a flair worthy of a noir classic. I do with a character list, index, and bibliography were included -- the foremost particularly since due to the scope of the history and Lieberman's not exactly linear storytelling it can be difficult to keep the players straight. That aside, for those intrigued by this tumultuous time period Gangster Squad is a fast-placed, not-to-be-missed thrill ride -- an absorbing and thought-provoking window into an explosive period of American history. Dec 31, Brittany rated it liked it. This is a tough one to review. I love true crime, even more so I love film-noir. This true account of gangsters, notably Mickey Cohen in LA in the 40's and 50's teetered on that film-noir feel throughout its entirety. While balancing the facts with their relative excitement, I understand there is a great deal of ground and fascinating men for Lieberman to cover, so it's not always in fact, hardly at all the action-packed, crime drama you see in the trailer for Warner Bros. This I can handle, I would always prefer a realistic account of curious and even unsolved events to a dramatized, speculative and Hollywood approach to the past. My beef with Lieberman, is that he writes as though he is giving a fictionalized version of events. The pages are riddled with characters who are drawn to hypnotize you and then dropped suddenly, as well as cliche sayings that you would expect to come from Philip Marlowe like, "Nothing is certain in police work, or in life C'mon Lieberman, tell it to me straight! I will say though, that while I hope the movie keeps me more entertained, the final 50 pages of the book afterword included made the whole thing entirely worthwhile. The movie and the book make almost at the same time but are totally diferent one of each other. I like that only for once that the characters were make like the real life. But that's not the reality This is a book really slow,and is write in 3rth person so the action scens not feel like if you will witness. Make that you realize how the time pass and how the people change in real life not as in a invented story. Jun 11, Myles Nester rated it it was ok. An interesting story, poorly told. The book is adapted from a series of newspaper articles and it feels like it. There is little narrative flow or focus over its page length, and the editorial discipline to stick to the subject is sorely lacking. However, it is a study of a fascinating time, where gangsters where stars and the police were hopelessly ill equipped to deal with organised crime. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of An interesting story, poorly told. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of Chicago's more famous characters. It is hard to recommend tho because it never really builds these stories into a book. As a contrast Public Enemies, which focuses on the loose society of bank robbers in the pre-war era, is a much more successful attempt at taking a collection of cops and robbers and turning it into a real page turner. If you have a keen interest in the american underworld, its worth picking up a copy but there's nothing here for anyone but the enthusiasts. View all 3 comments. Enjoyed listening to this story of LA's gangster squad.

Gangsters who vanished and were never found

This put him in danger, especially as the liquor business became more violent. In , Walsh had a dinner with friends, later dubbed his "death supper. The money was handed over to an anonymous guy in Boston who "[slipped] his hand through a hotel room door. Court TV's Crime Library reports an inquiry held after Walsh's disappearance failed to figure out what happened. One rumor was that he'd been buried on his own farm, another said his body was "stuffed into a barrel of cement," and dumped in the ocean. For decades, any suspicious corpse was compared to Walsh's dental records, but they never matched. By the time he was 16, Fredrick Tenuto already had a criminal record, according to The Mafia Encyclopedia. But his continuous trips to prison weren't that big a deal to him, because Tenuto was extremely good at breaking out. While he wasn't an important mobster, Tenuto got the nickname "Angel of Death" because he was a go-to guy if you wanted a hit done. But his carelessness would be his downfall. Albert Anastasia was a mafia don and properly insane. His answer to everything was violence and murder. When a man named Arnold Schuster did his civic duty and turned in a bank robber in , American Mafia says Anastasia announced he hated squealers, and ordered Schuster killed. The job fell to Tenuto. The Angel of Death did the deed in the open on a New York Street, and there was at least one witness. When Anastasia heard his triggerman had been seen, he panicked. Tenuto could be connected to him, so he ordered his hit man killed to clean up the messy situation. Tenuto vanished, almost certainly because he'd been murdered, but his body was never found. Weinberg rose to be his right hand man, personally killing many of Schultz's competitors, and running his empire when Schultz went on the run to avoid tax evasion charges, according to Hollywood Most Wanted. He liked his money and power, and if his boss fell, he risked losing it all. So Weinberg conspired with rival Lucky Luciano, giving the other mob boss tips on how to bring down his current don in exchange for "a healthy cut of any future action. On September 9, , Weinberg left a friend's house, got in a car, and was never seen again. While one story says Schultz killed his Judas "with his bare hands," it's the more common tale of his murder that went down in history. After being beaten almost senseless, Weinberg's feet were encased in cement and he was dumped in the East River while still alive. Vice says that this was where the Mafia stereotypes of "cement shoes" and "sleeping with the fishes" originates from, and it may very well have happened to Weinberg, even if they never did it again. America wasn't the only place that banned alcohol for awhile. Ontario also got in on the not-fun with the Temperance Act of , which was pretty much a blanket ban against booze. That meant you got assumedly very polite northern gangsters involved in bootlegging. The Star reports that one night in , Perri, the "patriarch of the mob," was on the scene as more than 2, bottles of whiskey were unloaded from a boat. The cops busted him, but Perri swore he was just in the area and had nothing to do with it. The charges were eventually dropped. A year later, he wasn't so shy about his work. In , Perri confessed his illegal activities to a reporter, and his wife called him the "king of the bootleggers. On April 23, , Perri got a headache while visiting a cousin. He went for a walk to try and shake it, saying he'd be back by lunch. He never returned. There's a theory that he was murdered by underworld rivals for control of his territory and dumped in Hamilton Harbour, but there is some evidence he might have learned about a plot to kill him and fled. Perri's biographer claims to have proof he lived in Massena, N. Canada has a surprisingly active and violent underworld, and Paolo Renda was right in the middle of it. Renda married Rizzuto's daughter and got heavily involved in the family business, including handling the finances. Renda had numerous run-ins with the law. The Globe and Mail reports that in he was convicted of arson, saw him arrested in a huge mob raid, and in , he pleaded guilty to "two counts of possessing profits from organized crime. A rival gang began fighting them for power, sending messages that included kidnapping Rizzuto's gangsters , who would later reappear safe and sound. That wasn't the case for Renda. On May 20, , while he was on conditional release from jail, construction workers saw a black car with a removable siren on top pulled the gangster over. Two men posing as plainclothes police officers bundled him into their car. His wife discovered Renda's SUV abandoned with the keys still in the ignition. The real police thought the hit might have been part of a vendetta dating back to the s. Paul Lieberman. Walmart Book Format. Select Option. Current selection is: Paperback. Pickup not available. Add to list. Add to registry. A harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels--the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Bros. In , the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Jack O'Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick. About all they had in common was their obsession. So O'Mara set a trap to prove Mickey was a killer. Two cops -- two hoodlums. Their fates collided in the closing days of the s, when late one night The Enforcer confronted Mickey and his crew. The aftermath would shake both LA's mob and police department, and signal the end of a defining era in the city's history. He spent more than a decade tracking down and interviewing surviving members of the real police unit as well as families and associates of the mobsters they pursued. About This Item. We aim to show you accurate product information. Led by brilliant "bug man" Con Keeler, the squad pioneered new forms of electronic surveillance and wire tapping. And in an age when J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI refused to acknowledge the existence of an organized mafia in America, the Gangster Squad was among the first to meticulously document the network of connections between LA operatives and their east coast counterparts, building massive handwritten dossiers on targets openly operating in the shadow of the law. Lieberman's extensive exploration of the Gangster Squad's activities, its members particularly straight-arrow John O'Mara and the roguish Jerry Wooters relative to Mickey Cohen , and their targets, is a highly readable, fast-paced account of a transformative era in the history of American law enforcement. Whether or not you agree with their methodology, Gangster Squad is a fascinating examination of the lengths a group of men were willing to go to in order to stand in the gap for their family and city in peril from gangsters who regularly got away with murder. Lieberman's prose and colorful metaphors pack a punch suggestive of the likes of Chandler, bringing his history to life with a flair worthy of a noir classic. I do with a character list, index, and bibliography were included -- the foremost particularly since due to the scope of the history and Lieberman's not exactly linear storytelling it can be difficult to keep the players straight. That aside, for those intrigued by this tumultuous time period Gangster Squad is a fast- placed, not-to-be-missed thrill ride -- an absorbing and thought-provoking window into an explosive period of American history. Dec 31, Brittany rated it liked it. This is a tough one to review. I love true crime, even more so I love film-noir. This true account of gangsters, notably Mickey Cohen in LA in the 40's and 50's teetered on that film-noir feel throughout its entirety. While balancing the facts with their relative excitement, I understand there is a great deal of ground and fascinating men for Lieberman to cover, so it's not always in fact, hardly at all the action-packed, crime drama you see in the trailer for Warner Bros. This I can handle, I would always prefer a realistic account of curious and even unsolved events to a dramatized, speculative and Hollywood approach to the past. My beef with Lieberman, is that he writes as though he is giving a fictionalized version of events. The pages are riddled with characters who are drawn to hypnotize you and then dropped suddenly, as well as cliche sayings that you would expect to come from Philip Marlowe like, "Nothing is certain in police work, or in life C'mon Lieberman, tell it to me straight! I will say though, that while I hope the movie keeps me more entertained, the final 50 pages of the book afterword included made the whole thing entirely worthwhile. The movie and the book make almost at the same time but are totally diferent one of each other. I like that only for once that the characters were make like the real life. But that's not the reality This is a book really slow,and is write in 3rth person so the action scens not feel like if you will witness. Make that you realize how the time pass and how the people change in real life not as in a invented story. Jun 11, Myles Nester rated it it was ok. An interesting story, poorly told. The book is adapted from a series of newspaper articles and it feels like it. There is little narrative flow or focus over its page length, and the editorial discipline to stick to the subject is sorely lacking. However, it is a study of a fascinating time, where gangsters where stars and the police were hopelessly ill equipped to deal with organised crime. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of An interesting story, poorly told. There are numerous intriguing moments and snapshots of an era now largely forgotten in the shadow of Chicago's more famous characters. It is hard to recommend tho because it never really builds these stories into a book. As a contrast Public Enemies, which focuses on the loose society of bank robbers in the pre-war era, is a much more successful attempt at taking a collection of cops and robbers and turning it into a real page turner. If you have a keen interest in the american underworld, its worth picking up a copy but there's nothing here for anyone but the enthusiasts. View all 3 comments. Enjoyed listening to this story of LA's gangster squad. Tale of how they "took down" Mickey Cohen. This was the basis for the movie Gangster Squad. The story of the squad was interesting but I felt like it went on a little long. However, I felt like there was a saving grace in the audio version at least in that there was an interview with the author as a sort of afterword. He talked about how he found out about the unit and got the surviving members to talk to him, especially since most of them d Enjoyed listening to this story of LA's gangster squad. He talked about how he found out about the unit and got the surviving members to talk to him, especially since most of them didn't really want to very much. Most of it I listened to on my way home from Christmas and then I had to check it out of the library again to finish it. The Bug Man- Phelps. Although the movie is not the same as what really happened, the book is much closer to the truth. He was the " Bug Man" Phelps. I am Proud of the fact that at the times when things were going so wrong, that my father not only worked hard for the Police to not only fix the crime in Los Angeles, but to Help make the LA Police Department Do better as well. I wish i could post the pictures i have, of the real story of this whole Gang Although the movie is not the same as what really happened, the book is much closer to the truth. Jan 01, Christal rated it it was ok. Not enough Ryan Gosling. There were some interesting insights provided by this book. Ask me to be specific and I'm unsure if I could furnish you with the details of a single one. Because of the writing style. To begin with, the writing is in the style of the kind of noir fiction popularised in recent times by the likes of James Ellroy. Lieberman in fact seems to make a lot of references to the noir style in this, making me think that this is the style to which he truly aspires to. It may be to some people's taste b There were some interesting insights provided by this book. It may be to some people's taste but I just think with a text such as this, interesting information on how the characters lived their lives would be far more enlightening. There were various other issues. Lieberman had the unendearing trait of revealing what he was about to write in the next chapter, destroying any suspense or wonder at how events might pan out. Not good. But the main problem was the fact that he seemed to focus on the banal. I'm not sure if this was due to a dearth of material for the book or what, but telling me the life histories of many, many, many insignificant characters in minute detail added nothing to the story. The main protagonist Mickey Cohen and antagonist Jack O'Mara were the only ones we needed to know about in detail. Maybe Jerry Wooters as well, at a push. Lieberman described the lives of EVERYONE in the book, trading his desire to do this against the need for the reader to know about the main characters. As a result, I felt that I knew far too little about Cohen by the end of the book. If you have plenty of time, give this a read. But there are hugely superior gangster books Murder Machine, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, Five Families to name a few that will give far better insight into the lives and times of these guys. Sep 29, Remi rated it it was amazing Shelves: owned. Absolutely loved every minute of this book. The people are so fascinating and so quotable and they aren't even characters in a novel, they're real people! I'm on a true crime book spree because of books like this! I don't expect the movie to be very good, especially with all of the changes they're making to it in light of the Batman shootings but I'll watch anyway just to see it with the open eyes of someone who read the book that inspired it. Dec 25, Justin Robinson rated it liked it. The cheeseball style was entertaining at first, but over the course of pages gradually wore out its welcome. Worse, it obscured some of the facts it was trying to convey.

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