A Brotherhood Betrayed
The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
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4.5 • 16 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The riveting true story of the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a turning point in Mob history.
In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was underway that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Commission. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel—but before he could testify, his shattered body was discovered on a rooftop outside his heavily-guarded hotel room. Was it a botched escape, or punishment for betraying the loyalty of the country’s most powerful mobsters?
Michael Cannell's A Brotherhood Betrayed traces the history of Murder, Inc. through Reles’ rise from street punk to murder chieftain to stool pigeon, ending with his fateful death on a Coney Island rooftop. It resurrects a time when crime became organized crime: a world of money and power, depravity and corruption, street corner ambushes and elaborately choreographed hits by wise-cracking foot soldiers with names like Buggsy Goldstein and Tick Tock Tannenbaum.
For a brief moment before World War II erupted, America fixated on the delicate balance of trust and betrayal on the Brooklyn streets. This is the story of the one man who tipped the balance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cannell (Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling) provides the definitive account of hit man Abe Reles (1906 1941), who served as the "assassin-in-chief" for the Italian-Jewish mob collaboration known as Murder, Inc.. Reles started his life of crime as a teenager in New York City, as an enforcer for a local racketeer, before his violent nature escalated to homicide. Brooklyn district attorney William O'Dwyer cut a deal with him in 1940 in exchange for testimony against the leaders of Murder, Inc. That bargain provided the prosecutor with a valuable witness who revealed "another America hidden in shadow with its own banks and penal system, its own tax code and law enforcement." But before Reles could testify, he fell to his death from a Brooklyn hotel window while in protective custody. O'Dwyer supported the theory that Reles fell accidentally during an escape attempt, and though that position was widely derided, no conclusive proof was ever found as to who pushed Reles out the window. Cannell dials in the the right level of detail in this grim story of violence, corruption, and the dogged efforts of law enforcement to break organized crime's hold on New York City. Readers interested in a non-sensationalized treatment of a major chapter in American crime will be riveted.
