The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums & Hideouts

The following was provided by The History Press:

The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums & Hideouts
By Beverly Ford & Stephanie Schorow

From gunmen to gangsters, from mob to Mafia, organized crime has left a mark on the City on the Hill, reaching back to the beginning of the last century to the recent capture of notorious mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. Now, two veteran journalists have untangled the threads of Boston’s bad guys and woven them into a reader-friendly guide to the labyrinth of hits, double-crosses and deadly deals on the mean streets of Boston. The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums & Hideouts by Beverly Ford and Stephanie Schorow, to be released on Dec. 14, 2011, is a primer for those who want to know more about the wiles of Whitey Bulger, the murderous rages of Joe “The Animal” Barboza and the double dealings of Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

Ford and Schorow, former colleagues at the Boston Herald, profile Boston’s gangsters in crisp clear prose, with helpful cross-references. The Boston Mob Guide travels back to Prohibition with the story of bootlegger Charles “King” Solomon and the murderous standoff between the Irish Gustin Gang and the emerging North End Mafia. The guide unravels the complicated hits of the Winter Hill Gang and the Irish mob wars of the 1960s and 1970s.

The authors will speak and sign books on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 7 p.m., at the Somerville Public Library, which is just a short distance from Winter Hill and events featured in the book. “Some of the most feared and fascinating underworld figures have left their mark on Boston—often in blood. This is their story. It’s also a story of their victims and of a justice system that, through the years, often looked the other way,” said Ford, an investigative reporter who covered many of the characters in the book.

Ford and Schorow examine the unsolved murders at the Blackfriars club, the Tong slayings in Chinatown and the horrific violence of the former Most Wanted criminal, Whitey Bulger. Schorow compares the tangled connections among Boston’s criminal element to the multiple relationships among Boston’s Brahmin elite. “Most of these guys were related or friends or partners or they murdered each other,” she said. Ford and Schorow target hits and hangouts with both contemporary and period photographs, revealing how Boston’s underworld operated right along the Freedom Trail, in an exclusive guide to Boston’s most infamous criminals. 

Beverly Ford is a Boston-based journalist and author who has spent more than twenty years as a reporter and freelance writer for the Boston Herald, the New York Daily News, the London Times, the London Mirror, Access Magazine, Bloomberg News and other publications.

Stephanie Schorow is the author of The Crime of the Century: How the Brink’s Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston; East of Boston: Notes from the Harbor Islands (The History Press, 2008); Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston; and The Cocoanut Grove Fire. She was the editor of Boston’s Fire Trail: A Walk Through the City’s Fire and Firefighting History (The History Press, 2007). 

See: http://thebostonmobguide.wordpress.com; or find The Boston Mob Guide on Facebook.