Married to the Iceman: A True Account of Life With a Mafia Hitman and the Inside Story of His Crimes [Hardcover]

Barbara Kuklinski (Author), John Driver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1994

A personal account reveals the bloody career of a brutally efficient hitman for the Mafia as told by his wife, who, with her children, suffered an abusive life of beatings, destruction, and death threats before discovering her husband's profession. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New Jerseyite Richard Kuklinski had several different personalities: loving, indulgent husband and father, raging monster who abused his wife and three children, and icy-hearted hit man who killed between 22 and 100 people. The subtitle is misleading; he was a freelancer who only occasionally did jobs for the Mafia. His wife, from a close-knit Italian-American family, endured 25 years of marital horror, which she describes in chapters alternating with those by her husband, in which his crimes are detailed. The account is assisted by playwright and screenwriter Driver, who interviewed Richard for 30 hours. Readers will wonder how this wife could have had no notion, as she claims, of what her husband was up to until he was sentenced to life in 1988. And only the most dispassionate will be able to plow through so many unrestrained passages dramatizing the terrors of this family's home life. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Convicted murderer Richard Kuklinski, who boasts of killing 465 (the correct number is probably between 22 and 50), is serving a life sentence. From interviews with both Kuklinski's long-suffering wife, Barbara, and the murderer himself, coauthor Driver has fashioned a captivating portrait of an evil murderer who also abused his wife. Driver mixes Barbara's first-person recollections of the New Jersey couple's courtship and abusive marriage with shorter, third-person reflections on Richard's foray into the pay-for-murder lifestyle that concluded with his 1986 arrest. His nickname, "Iceman," comes from the allegation that he stored a victim in a freezer for more than two years; Richard himself disputes that claim but tells an equally macabre tale of how he preserved the body in question. Although it is hard to believe that Barbara was totally oblivious of Richard's underworld dealings and although some might question why she didn't leave their explosive marriage before his arrest (the couple is now divorced), this is a compelling read. Sue-Ellen Beauregard

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: E P Dutton (November 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525937862
• ISBN-13: 978-0525937869
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,038,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing "Real" Godfather, March 21, 2001

By 

Andrew J. Tate (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Married to the Iceman: A True Account of Life With a Mafia Hitman and the Inside Story of His Crimes (Hardcover)

This is an amazingly realistic account of what organized crime is really like...for the members, their relatives, and their victims. John Driver is an illuminating, entertaining, brilliant writer.