Westies

by T.J English

Paperback, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

364.1066097471

Genres

Collection

Fiction

Publication

Bantam Books (2012), Edition: Reprint

Description

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window. Under their reign, Hell's Kitchen becomes a place where death literally rains from the sky. But when Mickey goes down for a murder he didn't commit, he suspects his friend has sold him out. He returns the favor, breaking the underworld's code of silence and testifying against his gang in open court. From one of the writers behind NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street comes an incredible true story of what it means to survive in the world of organized crime, where murder is commonplace.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom

I first became interested in The Westies when I saw a program called "True Crime" on the History Channel. That particular episode was about the Westies and I was somewhat glued to my television (which is very rare ... usually I don't even turn the thing on any more). But this particular episode's

story was so intriguing that I felt I had to know more so I bought the book. The Westies was gang that had as its home New York's Hell's Kitchen, home to many Irish-American immigrants and also controlled by a series of Irish organized crime gangs. Traditionally, these gangs followed certain codes of respect and deference, but as the author notes, it seems that after Vietnam, with the rise of a new generation, the old ways sort of went out the door and violence was the rule of the day. Enter young Jimmie Coonan -- a local boy, hotheaded and dangerous, with vengeful ambitions to take out the current head of the Irish mob in Hell's Kitchen, Mickey Spillane (not the author). His idea of killing was not only to do the deed, but then to "do the Houdini" -- meaning making the body disappear by dismemberment. Then add Mickey Featherstone, another local boy who had some serious mental issues & tended to solve his problems with knee-jerk violence. With other people working for them, they began a long reign of violence, extortion, murder, you name it. But Coonan decided that for them to get anywhere, they needed to hook up with the Italian mob. I won't go through the entire story but as it turns out, eventually a betrayal of trust leads one member down the path to become an informer. However, the criminal story is not 100 per cent of this book..English traces the attempts made by law enforcement agencies to take down these guys. I do have to also remark on the sad state of the justice system at the time as portrayed in this novel...Featherstone does several murders and walks?

The details are amazing and this one another one of those books I had trouble putting down. My problems with this book stem from the fact that it seems somewhat biased in favor of Mickey Featherstone, who by his own admission was a cold-blooded, psychopath who did his share of killing. I find it hard to be sympathetic towards someone like this or to excuse their previous behavior just because he may have been rehabiltated later.

All in all, a fantastic book. I'm looking forward to reading more about the topic and more books by this author. Recommended, for sure.

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LibraryThing member kraaivrouw

T.J. English is one of the best writers of true crime reporting that is a leap above the usual cheap paperbacks full of gory pictures that you see at the grocery store. His books are well-written, well-researched, and as much about the context of the crime or organized crime group that he is

writing about.

The Westies is his first book. In it you can see him working through all the things that will make his later books so fascinating. While he's written most about organized crime, he's continuing to expand his repertoire into further fields. Since Whitey Bulger was captured I've been wanting to go back and read this one - it was very hard to find when I discovered English and the one copy I did find was, shall we say, extremely used - ultimately the copy was so filthy it made it hard to want to read it.

I was very happy to see that the book had been published in a Kindle format and really dug into things this time. The Westies is about a group of semi-organized criminals who operated out of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in New York (now called Clinton). They grew up in an atmosphere were crime was a way of life and they became one of the most notorious gangs in history. For twenty years they ruled with an iron fist - dismembering, murdering, selling drugs, robbing, loansharking - the list goes on and on. They terrified the Italian mob so much that they made an alliance with The Westies in order to try to tamp down the violence that caused a lot of unwanted attention.

The Westies were a phenomenon of their changing time - the world they grew up in and into was a different place than the world of their parents. Much of their extreme brutality can be explained by the quote above along with exposure to the Vietnam War and their use and abuse of cocaine along with many other drugs.

They were brought down by Mickey Featherstone, a long-time member and right-hand man to James "Jimmy" Coonan, the nominal leader of the crew. Featherstone is a complicated figure and the tale of his association with the Westies is a fascinating one.

One warning: This is not a book for the squeamish. The Westies were infamous for their brutal violence and it would be impossible to write about them without writing about that in detail.

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