Mob Girl
A Woman's Life in the Underworld
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Missing Beauty comes a fascinating inside look at the mafia.
Growing up among racketeers on the Lower East Side of New York City, Arlyne Brickman associated with mobsters. Drawn to the glamorous and flashy lifestyle, she was soon dating "wiseguys" and running errands for them; but after years as a mob girlfriend, Arlyne began to get in on the action herself—eventually becoming a police informant and major witness in the government's case against the Colombo crime family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Arlyne Weiss grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the daughter of a Jewish mobster who ran an auto sales business as a front. In 1947, aged 14, she made the decision to emulate her heroine, Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend Virginia Hill, and become a gangster's moll. Her teen years were a carnival of sexual promiscuity, forgiven by her doting father but vociferously condemned by her critical mother. Arlyne considered Jewish mobsters too businesslike and tame; she preferred Italians, whom she found dangerous and hence exciting. Briefly married to small-time swindler Norman Brickman (whose last name she retained), she had a daughter who became a drug addict and died of AIDS in 1989. After 25 years in the criminal underworld, Arlyne became first an occasional and then, in 1975, a full-time police informant; she was a major witness in the government's successful case against the Colombo crime family. Carpenter ( Missing Beauty ), who won a Pulitzer for her crime reporting at New York's Village Voice, expertly recounts Arlyne's anomalous tale. Photos not seen by PW.
