The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family

by Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill

Overview

On February 26, 1986, Mafia underboss Gennaro Angiulo was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. In The Underboss, bestselling authors Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill tell the story of the fall of the house of Angiulo. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, aided in part by the Irish Mob's Whitey Bulger, entered the Boston Mafia's headquarters in Boston's North End early one morning in 1981 and began to compile the evidence that would lead to the entire upper tier of one of the most profitable and ruthless criminal enterprises in America.

Originally published in hardback by St. Martin's in 1989, The Underboss became a national bestseller. Information uncovered during the course of Lehr and O'Neill's Black Mass investigations adds new dimensions to the story and the authors include this new material-including Whitey Bulger's cagey manipulation of the FBI-in The Underboss's revised text and in a new preface and afterword.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586481087
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/05/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,001,775
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dick Lehr, a professor of journalism at Boston University, has won numerous national and regional journalism awards. He is a former investigative reporter, legal affairs, and magazine writer for the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting. He is the author of The Fence: A Police Cover-up along Boston's Racial Divide, an Edgar Award finalist for best nonfiction, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal, and its sequel, Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss. He lives outside Boston with his wife and four children.

Gerard O'Neill recently retired as the editor of the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, one of the nation's top investigative reporting units. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, been a Pulitzer finalist, won the Hancock Award, the Loeb Award, and many others.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	IX
1	Cold Pork Chops	1
2	The Mob in Boston	13
3	The Rise of Gennaro Angiulo	33
4	Catch Up	61
5	The Wave	89
6	Failure	113
7	Break-In	129
8	Inside 98 Prince Street	147
9	An Attempted Murder	169
10	The Noose Tightens	193
11	Mafia Murder	211
12	The Fall of Gennaro Anguilo	227
	Conclusion	245
	Acknowledgments	251
	Index	253

What People are Saying About This

George V. Higgins

The straight stuff ... Real - and wonderfully readable.... This is what the Mob's about now, cruel and smart and vicious. (George V. Higgins author of At End of Day)

Dominick Dunne

A tough and tautly written account of the interlinking machinations of the good guys and the bad guys.

Editorial Reviews

This fast-paced, engrossing, and ultimately satisfying story shows how the FBI bridged the mythic moat surrounding Angiulo.... Gripping.

Library Journal

An eminently readable capsule history of organized crime in Boston and ... an absorbing, true tale of cops and criminals.

Worcester Telegram

An engrossing story of the good guys winning big, told with insight and chilling effect.

Chicago Tribune

Nobody could follow these hair-raising maneuvers better, or write about them more authoritatively.... A riveting book.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fans of George Higgins' novels will feel right at home here.... This is how the Mob operates.... The full, grimy story.
— The Boston Globe

David Nyhan

The undoing of a Mafia underboss related with underdone flair or tension, this picks up momentum halfway through with the re-creation of the FBI's bugging surveillance, Operation Bostar, conducted in 1981 in Boston's ethnic North End, where Gennaro J. Angiulo's bookmaking operation was headquartered. Case agent was Edward Quinn, romanticized by the authors, reporters at the Boston Globe , to heroism. Still, the tale is not without a measure of real valor, especially given the ennui endured by the agents monitoring 850 hours of often boring, frequently garbled tape recordingstedium that caused them all to gain weight from gobbling donuts. An interesting aspect of the case proves to be the successful prosecution of Angiulo under the challenged federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Actby which he was ultimately convicted. And when he has served his 45-year term, there is a mandatory life sentence awaiting him for his conviction for accessory to murder. Photos. ( Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Longtime investigative reporters for the describe how in the 1980s a group of FBI agents brought down Gennaro J. "Jerry" Angiulo and his four brothers, who had run the Mafia in Boston for decades. Their coup was placing a bug at the main office. The 1989 edition was cloth bound. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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