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A BROTHERHOOD BETRAYED

Michael Cannell

The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.

The riveting true story of the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a legendary moment in Mob history.
In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin 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 Syndicate. 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 until the morning of the trial, when 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 face-down 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 in double-breasted suits and zooty fedoras.

For a brief moment before World War II took over everything, 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.

Michael Cannell is the author of three non-fiction books, THE LIMIT: LIFE AND DEATH ON THE 1961 GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT, I.M. PEI: MANDARIN OF MODERNISM and most recently, INCENDIARY: THE PSYCHIATRIST, THE MAD BOMBER, AND THE INVENTION OF CRIMINAL PROFILING. Cannell edited the House & Home section of The New York Times for seven years. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and many other publications.
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Published 2020-10-06 by St. Martin's Press

Comments

A riveting read from start to finish about notorious New York in the '30s and '40s when guns, gangsters, molls, and Murder Inc. ruled the shadowy streets and the politicians in their blood-stained pockets. Michael Cannell's impeccable research is exceeded only by compelling writing that has the staccato impact of a Thompson machine gun.

A book that can whisk you away to another world - even the Mob underworld - has pronounced value in apocalyptic times marked by a global pandemic, unprecedented wildfires and menacing hurricanes. Author Michael Cannell provides just such an escapist passport in his riveting true-crime gangster tale, "A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. ... Read more...

American mobster history is the gift that keeps on giving, and Michael Cannell's A Brotherhood Betrayed delivers the goods. A compelling and insightful resurrection of the Abe Reles story, when the Syndicate, for some people, was more insidious than the Internet. Read this book to rediscover a time when organized crime was a central narrative in the life of this country.

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Michael Cannell has brought this story alive with novel-like suspense and incredible research. You will love this book. Guaranteed.

In the sinister history of the Mafia, hitman-turned-snitch Abe Reles is a blood-spattered Judas. Journalist Michael Cannell chronicles an odious era of real-life godfathers and the stone-cold wiseguys who executed their wishes and their enemies - and the good guys who seemed to always be one step behind. Cannell deftly untangles the disturbing drama behind one of America's great Mafia mysteries. Mob books are never this elegant.