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"Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals"
Jeanne Boylan draws sketches of killers, and her talent is so rare that she's been called in on most every high-profile manhunt in the last couple of decades, from the Unabomber and the Polly Klaas kidnapping to the Susan Smith child drownings, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the murder of Ennis Cosby. What makes her unique has little to do with her artistic talent, however, and everything to do with her understanding of trauma and her interview technique. She talks to crime victims for hours, interspersing nonleading questions into easygoing conversations, teasing out true memories of the perpetrator's face and producing a picture that looks much more like the sought-after party than the usual police sketch. She reaches under the layers of pain and past the tainting photographs the police have shown to get at the pure image of the face that was seared into the brain of the witness at the moment of trauma.
Honest, sensitive, and engaging, Boylan narrates her own story--how she got started, why she
feels driven to accept every case the FBI launches her way, the slow disintegration of her
marriage, and the parallel progress of her career and personal growth. The focus of her book is
not on herself, however, but on the cases she helped solve and the people she helped heal. Her
sketches helped catch the man who kidnapped Polly Klaas; put behind bars the man who killed
Justin Jones; and save the life of Ruth Mayer (the kidnappers had dug her grave and were about to
kill her when they saw on the news how accurate the sketch was and released her). Boylan is
slowly (very slowly) influencing the way police departments interview crime victims. And now
she has written a first book that will glue you to your seat, lost in the world she so knowingly
portrays.
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"Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI and a Devil's Deal"
John Connolly, a rising FBI agent and fellow "Southie," had known the Bulgers since boyhood, when Whitey rescued him from a playground fight. After investigating organized crime in New York, Connolly was reassigned to the bureau's Boston office in 1975 and was determined to make a name for himself by relying on his old connections. He succeeded in a big way by lining up Whitey as an FBI informant in an effort to bring down the Italian Mafia--a major coup for both the FBI and Connolly. In exchange, Bulger received protection. Though heavily involved in extortion, intimidation, assassination, and drug trafficking, Connolly's "good bad guy" did not receive so much as a traffic infraction for over 20 years. In time, however, the deal changed, and information began flowing in the other direction, with Bulger manipulating Connolly and a small group of corrupt FBI agents to further his nefarious network. The criminals and the lawmen eventually became virtually indistinguishable.
"Black Mass," expertly details the twists and turns of this complex story, painting a vivid portrait
of Boston's underbelly and its inclusive political machine, as well as exposing one of the worst
scandals in FBI history. It's also an examination of loyalty--to family, home, and heritage--and "a
cautionary tale about the abuse of power that goes unchecked." As a final favor, Connolly tipped
off Bulger that he was to be indicted on racketeering charges in 1995, allowing him time to go on
the lam (he's reported to have access to secret bank accounts across the country). He was added to
the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list in 1999.
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"Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America"
I ventured into the Russians' gaudy strip clubs in Miami Beach; paid surprise visits to their well-kept suburban homes in Denver; interviewed hit men and godfathers in an array of federal lockups; and traveled halfway around the world trying to make sense of their tangled criminal webs, which have ensnared everyone from titans of finance and the heads of government to entire state security services.Their racket involves heroin smuggling, weapons trafficking, mass extortion, and casino operation, among other activities. "Blending financial sophistication with bone-crunching violence, the Russian mob has become the FBI's most formidable criminal adversary, creating an international criminal colossus that has surpassed the Colombian cartels, the Japanese Yakuzas, the Chinese triads, and the Italian Mafia in wealth and weaponry," writes Friedman. They've even penetrated professional hockey, as Friedman shows in an eye-opening chapter ("Federal authorities have come to fear that the NHL is now so compromised by Russian gangsters that the integrity of the game itself may be in jeopardy").
"Red Mafiya" benefits from a breezy narrative in detailing a master criminal operation whose influence on the United States is growing rapidly. Russian mobsters already have siphoned off millions of dollars in foreign aid meant to prop up their country's economy--and they may have a more direct impact on American national security concerns in the years ahead: "The Russian mob virtually controls their nuclear-tipped former superpower," writes Friedman. Now, there's a scary thought. Lifting the Iron Curtain seems to have been a mixed blessing: it let freedom in, and
organized crime out.
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"The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys out of Business"
"The Crime Fighter" is the story of a regular beat cop with big
ideas, and Maple's fast-paced, two-fisted tone helps punctuate an
often madcap assortment of recollections. Maple's an unusual
character to say the least, a somewhat rotund dandy who sports a
bow tie and derby in public and nurtures a reputation as a
gourmand. He takes the lion's share of credit for NYC's reduction
in crime, but almost in an offhand, good-sportish way, rather
than incessantly beating his own drum. He'd rather tell tales
about the time he chewed out the chief ("I'll be damned if I'm
going to start looking over my shoulder because of a guy down
here wearing Ricky Nelson suits") or the time he played up his
hemorrhoid problems to goad a prisoner into making a confession.
Once he gets past his active days on the beat, Maple settles down
into a steady rhythm, systematically laying out the obstacles he
faced in trying to get his department to fight crime in an
orderly, sensible manner, and then explaining the process whereby
he went right ahead and did it. (The COMSTAT system he devised
for storing and tracking crime information is now standard
operating procedure in many police departments across the
country.) "The Crime Fighter" never gets bogged down in its own
grandeur--on the contrary, parts of Maple's memoir read like
good Elmore Leonard-type crime fiction, and several passages are
so beautifully absurd that it takes a supreme effort of will to
remember that, yes, a cop really wrote that.
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