Crimes of New York: Stories of Crooks, Killers, and Corruption from the World's Tougest City Book

New York is not only a world capital of finance, fashion, and media, but also of every imaginable variety of criminal activity from the most brutal to the most creative. From rampaging draft rioters to Prohibition-era beer barons, from brilliant art thieves to Wall Street insiders, from the Boss Tweed to Dapper Don, New York’s criminals personify the dark side of the most vibrant and diverse city on earth. Crimes of New York takes us from the tortured, violent life of David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, who terrorized the city in the process of killing six young women to the story of the Manhattan yuppie millionaire whose marriage dissolved in drug abuse and ended in murder; from the life of a woman struggling to stay straight in the South Bronx to the violent childhood of teen killer Cape Man Salvatore Agron. Their crimes reflect our common failings—greed, anger, lust for power—intensified by the brutality and sophistication of the unique pressure cooker that is New York.

Library Journal

The title may be a bit hyperbolic, yet it provides the organizing principle for this intelligently assembled collection of stories, edited by Willis (NYPD: Stories of Survival from the World's Toughest Beat). The range of voices is remarkable. In "Notes from Underground," Pete Hamill reports sympathetically on the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting. Times city reporter Meyer Berger writes dispassionately about murder in "Mom, Murder Ain't Polite," taken from his 1942 collection The Eight Million. An excerpt from Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York mines downtown depravity after the Civil War, and Asbury's "The Persecution of the Reverend Dr. Dix" depicts dirty tricks played on a Manhattan rector in 1880. Professional writers did not craft all of the selections: chief of detectives Thomas Byrnes admiringly details the cunning of the bank sneak thief in an excerpt from his 1886 Rogues' Gallery, while ward boss George Washington Plunkitt explains "honest graft" in an excerpt from the classic 1905 Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, as reported by newsman William L. Riordon. Appearing disturbingly raw on the page are the words of gang member Salvador Agron, from Richard Jacoby's Conversations with the Capeman. One unlikely story included in a collection purportedly based on actual happenings is P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest," which locates the fictional Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves in New York. An engrossing collection; recommended for all public libraries.-Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.