Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano: Whitey Bulger's Enforcer and the Most Feared Gangster in the Underworld [Hardcover]

Howie Carr (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 26, 2011

Martin Scorsese's The Departed barely touched on his story. Now radio talk-show sensation, crime reporter, and Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr takes us into the heart of the life of Johnny Martorano.

 

For two decades, Martorano struck fear into anyone even remotely connected to his world. His partnership with Whitey Bulger and the infamous Winter Hill Gang led to twenty murders... for which Johnny would serve twelve years in prison. Carr also looks at the politicians and FBI agents who aided Johnny and Whitey, and at the flamboyant city of Boston, which Martorano so ruthlessly ruled.

 

A plethora of paradoxes, Johnny Martorano was Mr. Mom by day and man-about-town by night. Surrounded by fast-living politicians, sports celebrities, and showbiz entertainers, Johnny was charismatically colorful--as charming as he was frightening. After all, he was, in the end... a hitman.

 

 

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Howie Carr weaves a frightening tale of unlawful conduct, and it's all true." --Bill O'Reilly

 

"The indictments of mobster-mangled Boston continue to rain down in Howie Carr's superb new true-crime book, Hitman. It's horrifying, it's deadpan shocking, it's a brilliant treatise on criminal psychopathy and a portrait of a city defined and subverted by hoodlums run amok. Read this book--it will grab you, garrotte you, and leave you gasping for breath." --James Ellroy, bestselling author of American Tabloid and L.A. Confidential 

About the Author

Howie Carr is a columnist for the Boston Herald and author of The Brothers Bulger, which spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano:  Whitey Bulger’s Enforcer and the Most Feared Gangster in the Underworld. He also hosts a daily four-hour radio talk show syndicated throughout New England. In 1985, Carr won a National Magazine Award, and in 2008 he was elected to the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago. Carr lives in suburban Boston with his wife and their three daughters.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1St Edition edition (April 26, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765326396
• ISBN-13: 978-0765326393
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #297,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 41 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Read May 5, 2011

By FilmFan

Format:Hardcover

An ambitious book, basically a history of organized crime in Boston during the 20th century & beyond, mainly (but not exclusively) as seen through the eyes of the notorious Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger's murderous enforcer, Johnny Martarano. Martarano is obviously charming, almost charismatic company & tries to make a strong case that the people he killed eminently deserved it, but he does self-servingly avoid the fact that he also took out several innocent bystanders along the way. It IS sort of jaw-dropping that the feds let him out on the steets again after he admitted killing 20 people. (Although God knows how many there actually were.) But the feds were willing to pretty much let that go if they could get him to testify against Whitey, His partner-in-crime Stevie Flemmi, & most important, the deeply-dirty-&-corrupt-to-the-bone, FBI Agent John "Zip" Connolly. The murders of countless fairly low-level hoods do tend to blur after awhile at midpoint in the book, but things pick up at the end, as (relatively) clean feds close in to round up this pack of sociopaths/psychopaths. Well worth a thorough read.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Crime and the FBI June 3, 2011

By tom

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As horrifying as criminal activity that thrived in Boston, more horrifying is the corruption of the Boston bureau of the FBI.
Written with no-holds-barred style, Carr gives a frightening portrait of murder, thuggery, drug dealing and mayhem all under the watchful eye of politicians and the FBI.
A page-turner!

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A more in depth look at the Boston underworld May 18, 2011

By rocket21

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I enjoyed Howie Carr's first book, The Brothers Bulger, both in terms of the subject matter and the writing style. His second book, Hitman, explores some of the subject matter of the first book in more depth, as well as a bunch of other stuff (before Whitey Bulger became a powerful player).

The only issue I had with the book was the large quantity of names in the first two hundred pages - it was hard to keep up with all of the gangsters mentioned! Fortunately or not, most of them where knocked off, making the last two hundred pages easier to follow.

Once again, an enjoyable read for Howie Carr.