Gangsters of Harlem: The Gritty Underworld of New York’s Most Famous Neighborhood, by Ron Chepesiuk
I fell in love with the mobsters in Gangsters of Harlem just as many people have with the characters in The Wire or The Sopranos.
There’s a long literary tradition about the Harlem underworld—most notably Chester Himes's novels about policemen Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson—but it's been neglected by modern popular culture.
As Chepesiuk shows in this book, the organized crime bosses in Harlem were every bit as powerful and compelling as those who have become modern pop icons, like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, or Carlo Gambino.
Despite their shady business, it was easy—disturbingly so—to become invested in these mobsters. One detail that's going to stick with me for a long time is Chepesiuk's description of the "Murder Stables," owned by Ignazio Lupo of the Morello Gang, where hundreds of his rivals were tortured and murdered in the early 1900s.
True crime fans are going to eat this up with a spoon. Listening to jazz in the nightclub, witnessing a brutal murder—it's so intimate that you can almost feel complicit.
In a Wire-esque finale, Chepesiuk looks at the involvement of the NYPD with organized crime. If your cup of tea includes a dash of lethal bathtub gin, this is your hot toddy.
--Aretha Bright