Family Secrets - by Jeff Coen (Paperback)

About the Book

Painting a vivid picture of the pivotal case that broke apart a Chicago mob family, this narrative relies on court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes to recreate the story as it unfolded in a 2007 courtroom.

Book Synopsis

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. The Chicago courtroom took on the look and feel of a movie set as Chicago's most colorful mobsters and their equally flamboyant attorneys paraded through and performed: James "Jimmy Light" Marcello, the acting head of the Chicago mob; Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, one of Chicago's most eccentric mobsters; Paul "the Indian" Schiro; and a former Chicago police officer, Anthony "Twan" Doyle, among others. Re-creating events from court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes taken day after day as the story unfolded in court, Coen provides a riveting wide-angle view and one of the best accounts on record of the inner workings of the Chicago syndicate and its control over the city's streets.

Review Quotes

"(An) episodic telling . . . a useful and lucid history . . . [the book] teems with disturbing local color." --Gaper's Block

"[An] authoritative account . . . indispensable to truly knowing how Chicago works." --Chicago Tribune

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

"[Coen has produced] a careful account." --Bloomsbury Review

"A telling look inside the twisted world of organized crime, sure to interest those who follow mob mayhem." --Kirkus Reviews

"Coen's narrative is compelling even when covering materials where we already know the trial's outcome and gives the participants--from lawyers to prosecutors to defendents--a rich, full rendering which is no easy feat." --Chicagoist.com

"Painting a vivid picture . . . riveting . . . one of the best accounts on record." --TheChicagoSyndicate.com

"The book reads like a fast paced crime thriller and, indeed, though it is nonfiction, it makes for fascinating reading." --The Times

About the Author

Jeff Coen is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covering federal trials and investigations from the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago. 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.