Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Irish Mob [Hardcover]

Edward MacKenzie Jr. (Author), Phyllis Karas (Author), Ross A. Muscato (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2003

For decades the FBI let James “Whitey” Bulger get away with murder, allowing him continued control of his criminal enterprise in exchange for information. He went on the lam in 1995 and today follows top-ranked Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
Edward J. MacKenzie, Jr. was a drug dealer and enforcer who would do just about anything for Bulger. In this compelling eyewitness account, Eddie Mac delivers the goods on his one-time boss and on such former associates as Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi and turncoat FBI agent John Connolly.
Street Soldier is also a story of the search for family, for acceptance, for respect, loyalty, and love. Abandoned by his parents at the age of four, Mackenzie became a ward of the state, suffered physical and sexual abuse, and eventually drifted into Bulger’s orbit.
The Eddie Mac who emerges in these pages is complex: An enforcer who was also a national kick-boxing champion; a womanizer who fought for custody of his daughters; a kid never given much of a chance who went on, as an adult, to earn a college degree in three years; a man who lived by a strict code of loyalty but also helped set up a sting operation that would net one of the largest hauls of cocaine ever seized.
Street Soldier is as disturbing and fascinating as a crime scene, as heart-stopping as a bar fight, and at times as darkly comic as Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction or Martin Scorsese’s Good Fellas.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

All due respect to the Gambinos and the Genoveses, but the Italian mob families aren’t the only gangsters to make for compelling memoirs. In terms of relentless ruthlessness and its obsession with the almighty dollar, the Irish mob of Boston’s James "Whitey" Bulger could match its New York counterparts hit for bloody hit. For decades, Edward J. MacKenzie, Jr. (a.k.a. Eddie Mac) was a drug dealer, enforcer, and key associate of Bulger (on the lam as this book was published). Mac's first-person account of those years is rife with more gory details per page than the entire last season of The Sopranos.

By the brutal code of honor and loyalty in the streets, the candid dishing of such dirt marks MacKenzie as a world-class rat, second only to Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the man who put John Gotti away. But Eddie Mac has some justification in spilling the beans; in exchange for his tips, the Feds turned a blind eye toward his crimes. (It's also worth nothing that Bulger himself was an informant for the FBI.) The author certainly doesn’t portray himself as any sort of hero or "gangster with a heart of gold." Witness his charming account of one of many attempts to "enlighten" a wayward associate: "Probation notwithstanding, I had to open Steve’s eyes a little. I headed over to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a cup of coffee for $1.24. Medium, black, scalding hot. . . .Steve was still in his car, sleeping like a baby. The window was down and he had his head against the door, hands under his cheeks. I poured the hot coffee down the side of his face, making sure to get some on his eyeballs. . . I swear if I’d had enough money to buy the gasoline that day that’s what I would have done. . . but I’d only had $1.30, so the coffee had to do."

Although MacKenzie has not one but two ghost writers (Karas is a contributor to People magazine and the author of The Onassis Women, while Muscato is a self-described "strategic communications consultant"), the prose never rises above the level of the sleaziest pulp fiction. But that of course is exactly its appeal, and fans of the true-crime genre will find Street Soldier a supreme pleasure, guilty or not. --Jim DeRogatis

From Publishers Weekly

Former mobsters turning around and spilling their guts is nothing new, but this memoir is more than just true crime sensationalism or conscience-cleaning confessional. Instead, it's a window into an inconsistent world created by inner-city masculinity and the innate need to belong. While one-time drug dealer MacKenzie dispels the myth of James Whitey Bulger being a cross between Don Corleone and Robin Hood by portraying him as a murdering, child molesting, drug pusher who ratted on his own gang before disappearing, he admits to looking up to Bulger (who went into hiding in 1995 and is on the FBI's most-wanted list) and feeling proud doing his boss's dirty work. But Bulger's story, the essence of evil, takes a back seat, playing the foil to MacKenzie's tale of an internal struggle of good versus evil that speaks to America's obsession with the duality of mobster life. MacKenzie's brutally honest account of a childhood branded by absentee parents, foster homes, physical and sexual abuse and poverty is moving. He deftly walks the fine line of sentimentality, rarely blaming others for his transgressions while giving a chillingly detailed account of the role his past played in constructing his personality of contradictions: athlete-hood, husband-philanderer, role model drug dealer, parent-child, gangster-rat. Presenting these contradictions, MacKenzie's straightforward writing (with People magazine contributor Karas and communication consultant Muscato), shifts momentum like a street fight, weaving between the fantastic world of crime, violence and sex and the reality of their counterparts: prison, death and pregnancy. Permeated with the feeling that the now clean author still relishes the charge of criminal life, the memoir contains the edginess of a great thriller. Photos. Map not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Steerforth; 1 edition (April 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586420631
• ISBN-13: 978-1586420635
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #492,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My heart raced the whole time!!!, May 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Irish Mob (Hardcover)

This book offers a raw insight to the days when Whitey Bulger and his Irish mob ruled the streets of Southie. It was written by one of Whitey's former legbreakers, Eddie Mac who does not hold back on detail when telling his story - faint of heart be warned! This book is a must-read for those who enjoy reading true crime/mob books!

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth, July 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Irish Mob (Hardcover)

I've met Eddie on 4 or 5 occasions, and I have had long talks with him. I know some of the R.I. people he talks about. I've read the book. Everything Eddie says in this book is the truth as he saw it and lived it. I wish all of you could look into his eyes as he tells his story and see the pain of his youth, the disgust of Whitey's sexual tastes, and the true love he has for his 5 daughters.
This book is real, it deals with a part of life that most of us will never see. It does not make Eddie a hero it makes him a man that found the only door open to him to survive.
Read it!! It's hard, it's raw, it's true. If you start it in an evening plan on not going to sleep until it done---you can't put it down.
If he has a book signing anywhere near you go see him, talk to him, you'll never forget it!!!!!

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Violently Captivating, July 16, 2003

By 

buddyhead (Taxachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Irish Mob (Hardcover)

Street Soldier is as intense as a kick in the teeth with a steel-toed boot, but without the pain and drive to the hospital. You get the same cringe of discomfort and sick-to-your-stomach feeling reading about MacKenzie's horrible acts of violence, though- not to mention all the same rubbernecking fascination. His tale is formulaic in a lot of ways: "Mac" is passed around from one foster home to another, abused and molested as a kid; he quickly excels at a life of crime and rises to great and seedy heights; and he gets caught, crashes, and waxes about his mistakes. Those heights reached were probably not known outside of South Boston, even notwithstanding the raft of Irish Mob stories of the last decade (representing a wave that Street Soldier is clearly trying to ride). Locality doesn't matter, though, since the story is interesting enough to transcend state and cultural lines.

It is also violent enough to cross the lines of good taste. Not like I objected, but be forewarned that no details are spared as Mac clinically and dispassionately describes the kicking in of ribs, biting off of ears and fingers, and pulling out of teeth, all to collect a buck or spread the word of his boss' displeasure. All in a day's work...

Some of the more interesting aspects of this story that separate it from its peers include MacKenzie's love for, and prowess in, the martial arts and boxing. While obviously helpful to his career as a thug, they allowed Mac to win heaps of athletic awards that in another lifetime could have been his ticket to legitimacy. Mac also didn't seem to indulge in the drugs and substances that he pushed, which arguably helped him remember the last 20 years more clearly. Additionally, this may be one of the first accounts of the Boston Irish Mob scene to really expose all of Whitey's flaws, transgression, and evil facets, even though Mac arguably stands nothing to gain (and everything to lose) by so doing. Lastly, Mac is speaking from the other side of his Mob life, having crossed without having failed. I mean, he got pinched, and had to rat out and set up Colombian drug lords in order to gain his own freedom, but he was pretty much a perfect success in Whitey's organization (at least as he tells it). The end of his criminal career was mostly engendered by Whitey's picking up shop and disappearing.

Mac's tone as he recounts his life's work reveals a lot about how he views his violent role in society. Although he is careful to give the appearance of self-deprecation and candor about choosing the wrong path, you quickly get the impression he's window dressing, and is entirely too comfortable with having spent most of his adult life hurting and stealing from others. True, a lot of guys harmed were no angels, but there are a lot of innocents beaten up for the sake of it, and houses ransacked for a quick buck that went more to beers and good times than food and necessities. You wish Mac had had more violent comeuppance in his lifetime, and, no, his hard times as a kid just don't quite rise to the level of compelling the reader to enable his actions.

The tone grows worse as the book wanes, too. Mac starts complaining about justice, particularly regarding one of his violent thug friends who is still locked up, without any irony whatsoever. Despite having walked away scot-free after a life preying upon poor, honest victims that he sized up as living suckers' lives, he has no problem whining about the world's injustices. Also unsettling is that Mac admits to not knowing whether or not living on the level is the right path for him; there is enough uncertainty about his flying straight to make it seem like the only happy ending means Mac is locked up away from the rest of us.