Overview

Even in Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, the Family Secrets case was a true spectacle when it made it to court in 2007. A top mob boss, a reputed consigliere, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were accused in a total of eighteen gangland killings, revealing organized crime's ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Painting a vivid picture of murder, courtroom drama, family loyalties and disloyalties, journalist Jeff Coen accurately portrays the Chicago Outfit's cold-blooded--and sometimes incompetent--killers and their crimes in the case that brought them down. In 1998 Frank Calabrese Jr. volunteered to wear a wire to gather evidence against his father, a vicious loan shark who strangled most of his victims with a rope before slitting their throats to ensure they were dead. Frank Jr. went after his uncle Nick as well, a calculating but sometimes bumbling hit man who would become one of the highest-ranking turncoats in mob history, admitting he helped strangle, stab, shoot, and bomb victims who got in the mob's way, and turning evidence against his brother Frank.

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9781665237994

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[A] revealing, shocking book . . . superbly crafted.-- Publishers Weekly

Author Information

Jeff Coen has been a reporter on the Chicago Tribune's political enterprise team since 2010, covering a variety of issues and campaigns and the political activity of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He was present in the courtroom throughout the Family Secrets trial, and his pieces on the case were featured in a popular series in the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of Family Secrets: The Case that Crippled the Chicago Mob, and coauthor of Golden: How Rod Blagojevitch Talked Himself out of the Governor's Office and into Prison. Matthew Boston is a New York-based actor with over thirty years of professional experience working in theater, film, television, and voice-over. He received his training from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Shakespeare & Company, and the Lee Strasberg Institute.

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