A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection [Hardcover]

Patrick Nee (Author), Richard Farrell (Author), Michael Blythe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2006

A Criminal and an Irishman is an incomparable account of Pat Nee's life as an Irish immigrant and Southie son, a Marine, a convicted IRA gun smuggler, and a former top associate of Whitey Bulger's. His narrative transports the reader into the criminal underworld, inside the planning and preparation for an armored car heist, inside gang wars and revenge killings. Pat Nee details his evolution from tough street kid to armed robber to dangerous potential killer. He discloses for the first time how he used his underworld connections and know-how as a passionate and effective IRA operative. For years law enforcement and the media have speculated about important events with Pat Nee near or at their center: the Mullen-Killeen gang war for control of South Boston, the Valhalla smuggling operation (seven tons of heavy weapons aboard a fishing boat from Gloucester, Massachusetts, bound for Ireland), the murder of John McIntyre, and many other episodes. Pat NeeÕs stories are sometimes dark and brutal, but they shed light on the world in which we live, and are stories that only he can tell.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nee served 18 months for planning the largest shipment of arms from America to the IRA in 1984. He was also an associate of the notorious mobster Whitey Bulger in South Boston. But Nee's insider account of his career as a thug and an IRA gunrunner proves less interesting than one might expect. The details of his youth and teenage descent into gang membership will sound familiar to most readers. And while Nee attempts to present himself as a genuine Irish patriot, saying others merely pay lip service to the cause of the IRA, those claims are less than convincing, given, among other things, his declaration that "[t]o this day, I'm not sure what was the deciding factor for me in linking our underworld activities with the IRA's cause. Maybe I was bored with Whitey." In the end, there is too little in this account (written with the help of journalist Farrell and screenwriter Blythe) to keep the attention of any but the most die-hard true crime buff. (Mar. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Nee served two masters during his ascent through Boston's Mob hierarchy, for he was simultaneously deeply involved in running guns to the IRA. His gang superiors frequently warned him to back off or at least sublimate his IRA boosting to keep the heat off their primary endeavors, but Nee refused, eventually going to jail for gun-running. His story already has all the makings for a taut true-crime romp in the conflicts between Nee's IRA enthusiasm and the best interests of South Boston Mob kingpin Whitey Bulger, whose is-he-or-isn't-he homosexuality adds another layer of subterfuge. Yet Nee's telling of these tales is somewhat flat, possibly because his strong commitments make even a whiff of humor or irony inexpressible. Still, books about the post-1970 state of organized crime and its leaders aren't legion, making this book ipso facto a nice shelf mate to Rick Porello's To Kill the Irishman (rev. ed., 2001), on the Cleveland Mob at roughly the same time, and the various studies of John Gotti's NYC heyday. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Steerforth (March 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586421034
• ISBN-13: 978-1586421038
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,169,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Achievement!, March 29, 2006

By 

David P. Dionne (Manchester, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection (Hardcover)

South Boston circa 1950-1985 is one of the hottest subjects to flood the new non-fiction book releases market at this moment. Titles such as popular columnist/talk show host Howie Carr's "The Brothers Bulger," Kevin Weeks's "Brutal," and John "Red" Shea's "Rat Bastards" all share display space with Patrick Nee's narrative of life as a prominent gangster in the renowned peninsula area of New England's hub city. "A Criminal and an Irishman," Nee's account of that lifestyle, is the best of the lot.

Co-author Richard Farrell brings Nee's story to life in a formidable manner, resulting in a book that transcends the usual true crime format and offers readers profound insights about the environment of South Boston during that era, and how and why Irish nationalism played such a pivotal role to many of its residents, Irish-born Patrick Nee chief among them. Farrell is an astonishing wordsmith who crafts an intelligent and extraordinarily perceptive narrative based on Nee's intuitive account of events and characters that shaped his life in "Southie."

Most notably, "A Criminal and an Irishman" presents non-South Boston residents with an accessible portrait in words of what that area was like to live in during the period addressed in the book, and brings it home to the reader in a way that makes the nature of its landscape and culture fully graspable. You feel as if you are there in South Boston during the decades in question. None of the other writers of books devoted to South Boston-related crime (including the masterful Howie Carr and the excellent Boston Globe reporters Gerard O'Neill and Dick Lehr) have captured South Boston's essence as Patrick Nee has through Rich Farrell's exceptional research and craftsmanship in weaving words. It is both history (American and Irish) and a very compelling story at once.

This is Nee's account of events as they transpired-not the FBI's, the newspapers, or anybody else's. Co-authors Rich Farrell and Michael Blythe used no confidential informant sources or existing news archives in the book's narrative. It is first and foremost Patrick Nee's story. And his version of events diverge radically from those conventionally accepted, markedly so in two instances-who really assassinated long-time South Boston gang leader Donnie Killeen, and the inter-web of complexities involved regarding the South Boston Irish gang wars of the early 1970s. Nee gives readers new perspectives to consider, and they are all highly plausible.

Patrick Nee is portrayed as a person who possesses an extraordinarily strong belief system-core values that are enduring. Nee's values, as conveyed in this book, shaped his behavior in every way. It causes him to be family-oriented, altruistic, and even spiritual, together with his choices to engage in criminal activity. Whereas Nee is a complex person, his beliefs make him dependable (you know where he stands) and easy to trust. They also produced conflict. Nee's core values are unchanging and have put him in discord with people who opposed or didn't value them. It also placed inner demands on Nee to find work that meshed with those values, work that was meaningful to him and that mattered. He found this, until recently, in criminal pursuits. It produced the motivation for him to work hard, excel, and achieve consistent with his values and beliefs. This is a dominant theme throughout the book, and truly resonates in the chapters devoted to Nee's efforts to assist the IRA in attaining weapons and ordinance to achieve their goals. Whether or not readers agree with the issues at hand, they can appreciate and understand Nee's resolve in resorting to the activities involved and his iron-clad commitment to the causes he believes.

This book is a remarkable achievement in both style (written) and substance (historical accuracy). The reader comes away from this well-crafted story with both a keener sense of its related history and a different outlook on the collective characters that comprise recent gang and racketeering activity in South Boston. I highly recommend it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another bonkers avowed bad guy writes a page turner, May 31, 2006

By 

kooky Kid "Bookfiend1818" (east coast) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection (Hardcover)

You don't have to approve of the lifestyle choices of this thug to enjoy what is a great story. This is not really a morality tale per se although from the writer's warped perspective there is the redeeming aspect of the the whole in that Nee's passion was supporting the IRA terrorists by buying and shipping a huge magnitude of firearms for the "soldiers" to use to fight for their freedom. ( Great pains are taken to keep the arms dry so they are outfitted with plastic bags that the IRA soldiers store in the bogs ) A million dollars worth are shipped "free of charge" by the Boston irish patriots-I won't spoil all the fun for you readers. Whitey is only a supporting player in this particular shenanigans , but he does get artfully dissed which is a small pleasure... The bottom line is that all that honor and bravery aside,
there was no small amount of criminal shake downs, thefts, and all sorts of nefarious doings that supported the criminals self and family , but then again- he never said he was a "good guy" !

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow... just Wow., April 8, 2006

By 

Samantha "Samantha" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection (Hardcover)

Wow. This book was so captivating. Nee uses his talent as a refreshing to see that Nee wasn't one of those criminals that thinks he is the toughest thing to walk. (Unlike most authors to write about their gang related lives.)
Nee was not more a criminal than an Irishman or a Southie gang member. He is an Irishman in blood, a Southie gang member by associations, and a criminal by occupation. The title suggests that he uses his criminal side to help in the aid of his fellow Irishman. And I think the book portrays that idea thoroughly. It does not just delve into one aspect of his life. He goes through his time as a boy growing up in Ireland and then to a criminal (seeking revenge for his brother's murder, robbing trucks, etc). The Southie gang member title, just connects all these theories.
Southie is, traditionally, a completely Irish town. This connects Nee's Irish heritage to his Southie gang member title. Nee, Blythe and Farrell include this information in the book when you see Nee move from Ireland to Southie. Nee becomes friends with a group of kids his age, and thus his days as a gang member begin. Though the book focuses a lot on Nee's Southie life and the gang war between Whitey Bulger and himself, I think the main emphasis is how Nee tied all aspects of what he was into helping the IRA, who was in serious need of help.
Not many American's knew exactly what was going on in Ireland, not even many Irish-Americans. What people knew was heard over the news or radios. Nee's book sheds a new light on what was really happening. And how, though his aid did not solve everything, it was help needed. To say this book doesn't focus on the 'Irishman' in this book, is to be completely incorrect and just to have proved, you did not read the book. The chapters of Nee growing up in Southie, fighting Whitey, allying himself with Whitey, was all preparation for his task in heling the IRA.
So, in short, this book was an eye opener in so many ways. It's not a book about Nee vs. Bulger, or about Bulger's doings and inner gang workings, those books are everywhere and not very reliable. Of course, some guy is going to boast about how he was Whitey's right hand man, and over came the obstacles when Whitey ratted everyone out. They'll be a hero to people who don't know the true story. Nee's book is not to boast his ego, or roll around in money. The book is to let people know about Nee's life, what happened in it, and how he came back from it. Nee doesn't brag, he tells it how it is. I loved this book, and everything about it.