The westies

by T.J. English

In the tradition of The Godfather, The Westies is a powerful tale spanning 60 years. A gang of Irish-Americans, the Westies patrolled Manhattan's West Side throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s. They ruled the tough blue-collar neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, where bodies were known to literally fall from the sky.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, History, New York, Biography, Irish Literature

Paperback

First published March 19, 1990

About the author

T.J. English's latest book is THE LAST KILO. English is an author and journalist with an emphasis on organized crime, the criminal underworld, and the criminal justice system. Many of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, including HAVANA NOCTURNE, THE SAVAGE CITY, PADDY WHACKED, and WHERE THE BODIES WERE BURIED. Four of his books have been nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of Best Fact Crime (BORN TO KILL, HAVANA NOCTURNE, THE SAVAGE CITY, WHERE THE BODIES WERE BURIED). In 2023, his book DANGEROUS RHYTHMS was given a special award by PEN Oakland. A collection of his journalism was published under the title WHITEY'S PAYBACK, an anthology that includes articles originally printed in Playboy, Newsweek, Esquire, The New York Times, and other national publications. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 rehabilitated 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.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I purchased this one on a Kindle daily deal and I think I got burned. My enthusiasm when I started was pretty high and then just a few pages in it began to fall, and continued falling until the very end when I just kind of flipped through the epilogue.

My disappointment sprang from a misunderstanding: I thought this was a work of non-fiction. I was expecting to read some fairly dry but interesting text about the Westies, maybe some good direct quotes brought up during proceedings, etc. Instead I got fictionalized passages, all emotioned-up, stuffed with slang, and filtered through the author's idea of what these people were truly like and who were the true good guys.

A quote:

"As his tour of duty wore on, Featherstone's sense of guilt and displacement deepened. He drank almost every day. Sometimes, he would get so fucked up he would have blackouts and hardly remember what had happened the night before."

Another:

"Not only were the Italians going to be looking into this Ruby Stein thing, but now there were going to be "bulls", or police, all over the neighborhood."

Another:

"With three razzle-dazzle courtroom victories in a row, Hochheiser and Aronson became folk heroes in criminal circles on the West Side of Manhattan - and the scourge of the NYPD."

add to those ugly little messes a few others like a vivid description from the point of view of a guy who was getting shot. It noted where he was hit first and how bad it hurt (again, from his point of view) ... and then revealed that this guy died a few minutes later. Right. Got it. I understand the author's desire to add drama to what could otherwise be dry, but this seemed excessive.

It was also obvious that the author had written down various notes that he felt needed to be attached to certain minor characters and then never checked them off the "I've used this already" list, leaving readers subjected multiple times to passages like:

""Mad Dog" Sullivan, rumored to have been the one who killed Jimmy Hoffa,"

Let me check my notes and make sure that's a different "Mad Dog" Sullivan than the one you told me is rumored to have killed Jimmy Hoffa.

One last quote which I point out specifically:

"[...] it was largely a sympathetic piece presenting Mickey as a victim of war."

When I read that line I had to check to see if the author was talking about his own book or some other published work.

I trudged through to the finish, hoping the description of the trial would somehow miraculously pull this book out of its downward spiral, but no. The whole thing held my interest about as much as some crappy History Channel docu-drama at 3 in the morning, basically not worth the effort required to make it stop, might as well just let it roll until we reach the credits.

p.s. Apparently I don't have a category on my Kindle for "fictionalized version of non-fiction events" so it just went into "read" and hopefully will never creep out again.

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

New York Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob: murder, mayhem, extortion, drug abuse, sociopaths, and body dismemberment - what's not to like?

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Westies is the story of the Irish Gang from New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. The story traces their rise through their reputation of extreme violence and eventual fall from the severed friendship of the leading members.

The majority of the book focuses on Jimmy Coonan, who would become the leader of the Westies, and his enforcer; a Vietnam Veteran and possible schizophrenic, Mickey Featherstone. Together they beat, robbed, and murdered many people before doing “the Houdini” and making the body disappear. “The Houdini” became their calling card and would allow Jimmy to begin a partnership with New York’s Italian mob families.

Greed and disloyalty would eventually prove to be the downfall of this gang and the truth would eventually all play out in America’s courtroom. The Westies captures the account of one of America’s most important crime organizations.

[Hans Brienesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regardless of what some of the reviewers have written I found this to be a thoroughly riveting book, putting into good honest prose something which has in the past been sensationalised on celluloid and "pulp" type detective novels. Nowhere do we find the kind compassionate killer who cold bloodedly shoots his victim cleanly then puts his gloves on and calmly walks away. Rather we find a desperate ruthlessness born of the environment of disadvantaged childhoods in an urban setting characterised by violence, honour, and misguided loyalties. Some were cold blooded enough to kill and dispose of their victims in a particularly ghoulish way, but some were caught in that endless cycle of kill or be killed. Never has the term "He who hesitates is lost" been so aptly demonstrated or applied. The mental torment suffered by those imprisoned in this lifestyle attempting to break free is brilliantly told by the author. Some licence has been used in the record of the actual conversations but it must be remembered that reconstructions have been made by using several disparate viewpoints and after an interval of several years can you remember exactly what was said regarding a mundane event in your life? And again what I really like to see in non fiction books, the endpieces, are well presented. An interesting read I recommend to all interested in the American criminal underworld.

[David Keaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the largest cast of characters I've ever had to wade through in a true crime book to get to the main event (more names and maps than Lord of the Rings up in this piece), but luckily they start killing each other and whittle down the roster relatively quickly. Also probably the most gruesome gang I've ever read about. Boy, do these boys love to chop up bodies! Some of this hickory-smoked, charnel house flavor did carry over into the (very loose) film adaptation State of Grace, like where a psychotic Gary Oldman playfully tried to tickle undercover cop Sean Penn with a pair of severed hands he was keeping in his freezer. He even made a dad joke when Penn pulled his gun to make him stop: "Hands up!" And dads would definitely appreciate the shenanigans here (a body probably gets chopped up in a bar called "Shenanigans," I can't remember), but in spite of some obvious liberties taken with what these goons would have been thinking at the time, I give it at least three stars for the fuck-ups on parade and, more importantly, the most energetic tutorials on mutilating corpses since Be Your Own Undertaker.

[Tamara Curtin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing up hearing stories of Coonan and Spillane's conflict and the crazy days of Hell's Kitchen, this was a great book to find some well researched details on the legends I have often heard. It felt like the kind of book it is, a story pulled together from records and court documents, which don't always make for gripping reading. There were quite a few parts that make me smirk or go ahhhh! But not enough to recommend it to anyone who doesn't already have an active interest in the Irish mob in New York.

[Bookish]

My previous publishing job was headquartered just east of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, a midtown neighborhood west of Times Square, running all the way to the Hudson River. I often walked home from work, and my route took me through this storied location. It’s gentrifying, slowly, now, but it used to be legendarily rough. The Westies tells a crime story set in the area during its last gasp as a scary place. During the 1970s and 1980s, Hell’s Kitchen was the home of a murderous, drug-dealing, loansharking, armed-robbing, kidnapping, and racketeering gang called the Westies, its members mostly Irish-American. They were beyond brutal. They gained strength when they joined forces with the Gambino crime family. After a ton of mayhem, double-crossing, dismembering, and more, the Westies were finally broken up and faced justice. T.J. English tells the whole amazing story. There’s so much terrorizing in this book, I’m glad I didn’t read it during my days walking through the neighborhood. Even though the gang was long gone, I think I might have still been watching my back! —Phil (https://www.bookish.com/articles/frid...)

[MM Suarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

"As terrifying as the Westies had been, for those who’d lived their entire lives in the neighborhood, the alternative was far more unsettling—that the Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob, born of another age, was the last vestige of a culture and a community that would never be seen again."

If you enjoy reading about gangsters and the underworld, and are a fan of T.J. English's work as I am, then you will like this book, it provides an in-depth look at Hell Kitchen's infamous Irish mob the Westies, and their murderous leader Jimmy Coonan. Suffice it to say these guys made the Italian mobsters look sophisticated.😲. Warning: This book has lots of murder and graphic violence and it runs a bit long but still a great read.

[Jason Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best mob book I ever read, but certainly not the worst either. This book deals with The Westies a NYC Irish Mob that pretty much ruled Hell’s Kitchen.

[Brooklyn Attic Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew way too much about the Westies before reading this. I had been one of the unfortunate few young women who happened to at one point date a theatrical teamster with long ago neighborhood ties with an elderly mother who loved to sip on vodka seltzers at brunch and reminisce old stories, like anyone even knew who TF she was even talking about...until a decade later when I read this.

This book is an excellent insight into the gorey details of Hells Kitchen in the 70s/80s, and even then I feel a lot was left out. We come to find out this book is really empathetic towards Mickey Featherstone. The author & the defense was all based on Featherstone's telling all. Whom was beating indictments based on the defense that he was a "schizophrenic" with PTSD from serving in Vietnam aka mentally unstable.

No, this book is not well written, it sounds like a crazy story told by everyone's favorite, foul-mouthed, drunk uncle you see once a year around the holidays. But that's not the point. The point is this all happened and here is a better than fiction crime story that leaves the reader flipping through the pages. And I'm not surprised Guiliani took credit for dismantling them.

What can I say? I loved it. It's an Interesting part of NYC history. Take it all with a grain of salt. The story victimizes and puts Featherstone in a better light. He's still not the guy I'd want to live next door to, you know? I plan to read more of the earlier days of street gangs in NYC. This was way better than I expected it to be.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Westies" was the name given by the press and the police to a group of Irish mobsters working out of Hell's Kitchen from the late 60s to the late 80s. Led by Jimmy Coonan, this violent gang of psychopaths terrorized their small section of New York City, leaving a trail of bodies behind. Coonan started out by wanting revenge against gang leader Mickey Spillane (not that Spillane!), who had pistol-whipped Coonan's father. The gang was responsible for an estimated 60-100 murders.

It's easy to give the Westies more credit than they deserve. For the most part, they were more brawn than brain, inclined to kill people at the drop of a hat for no real reason. They were often laughably incompetent. Their repeated attempts to kill Danny Grillo are a good example of this. Roy DeMeo, a Gambino crime family soldier, disposed of Grillo almost as an afterthought, much to the Westies' embarrassment.

This is a fascinating, though horrifying read. The Westies placed no value on any human lives other than their own, and the number of brutal murders in the book is mind-numbing. It is said that truth is stranger than fiction, but it can also be much darker. No fictional horror story can match this real-life one, simply because it is real.

The problem I have with this book is English's handling of Francis "Mickey" Featherstone, one of the Westies' chief killers. Featherstone is portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic light. A Vietnam vet with paranoid schizophrenia and possibly PTSD, Featherstone comes across as pathetic and sad. Uhm, no. He's not. He's a violent criminal who brutally murdered several people. Detective Jim Coffey, who caught Featherstone, said, "You wouldn't want to get into an argument with him over a parking space." It's almost as if English thought he had to have a sympathetic character somewhere in this story, and he figured Featherstone - who copped a plea and testified against his fellow gangsters - fit the bill.

[Jevron McCrory · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the story told in this historical novel is true (and it's largely based on fact, as I am led to believe), this proves the ethos espoused by the mythical Keyser Soze in the movie, The Usual Suspects. You don't need money, guns or even numbers, you just need the will to do what the other guy won't.

The infamous Westies (a name the media and police gave a gang of west Manhattan Hell's Kitchen Irish crooks) never comprised of more than twelve members at any one time and yet, their reputation and influence was staggering and the sheer amount of fear they were able to generate was astounding. Beginning with a fledgling ambitious psychopath named Jimmy Coonan and a reckless, unstable, highly volatile Vietnam vet, Mickey Featherstone, the gang held the west side in an unshakable grip of fear that reached so far and wide, the biggest of the Italian Five Families, The Gambinos, sat up and took notice of them.

T.J English has crafted a fascinating document to those times. With an infinite amount of detail and paced beautifully, the book drew me in from page one. I've read other reviews that damned English for an overly dramatised prose yet I easily forgave this, making what could have been a rote-by-numbers chronological account of crimes, dates, facts and figures truly come alive. If artistic license has been taken, so be it. (Doesn't the author even explain and apologise for this at the very beginning?)

This is a powerful and riveting book, one I will return to in time.

(For fans of this material, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the movie, State Of Grace, starring Gary Oldman, Sean Penn and Ed Harris, which was oh so loosely inspired by these reported events).

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick: what ethnic group do you think of when you think "organized crime"?

Probably the Italians, whether fictional like Don Corleone or the Sopranos; or real ones like Al Capone, John Gotti, "Sammy The Bull" Gravano, etc. Maybe a follow-up thought would be Jews -- whether as organizers for the Italian mob, or in their own organizations like Murder, Inc.

You probably didn't think of the Irish.

But maybe you should.

The book takes us inside the Hell's Kitchen gang that the press dubbed "The Westies", focusing in particular on Mickey Featherstone, one of the central members, who eventually turned into an informant.

But none of that explains the appeal of the book. The crime details are disturbing and specific, the dialog is blunt and not -ing printable, and the cast of characters (so to speak) includes the hoods, cops, lawyers, politicians, and just folks from the neighborhood.

On a personal note, I knew that Hell's Kitchen used to be very violent, but I didn't realize a lot of the violence was in the '70s and '80s when I was growing up (in a different part of Manhattan).

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not much of a fan of modern gangster or mafia history. This book told the story of the Irish Mob in Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s through the 1980s largely through the eyes of one key member, later turned informant, Mickey Featherstone. It provides good background on the earlier mobsters and their replacement by the Westies through their breakup following the courtship with the Italian Mafia.

The book is a compelling read even if you don't care for mob stories, which was the case with me. If you enjoy mob stories you enjoy this book.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in less than two days, great read which reads more like a piece of very good mafia/mob fiction. The scary thing is it's true !

Very fast moving & brutal account of the rise & eventual demise Westies mob within Hells Kitchen New York City.

Recommended for all true crime / mafia lovers out there.

[Hashim · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting enough if you care about the irish mob. unfortunately i stopped caring about half way through.

[C.S. Poe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Westies: Inside New York’s Irish Mob by T.J. English is such a wild, unhinged, and unbelievably true recounting of the history of 20th century Hell’s Kitchen and the Irish-American gangs that ran its streets until the 1980s. English’s writing is far from traditional nonfiction storytelling. Instead, it reads like you’re sitting in the dark corner of an old saloon—the air is smokey, you’re a few cheap drinks in, the tabletops are sticky, and a grisly New York gangster is regaling you with tales of extortion, racketeering, loansharking, and murder.

Lots of murder.

Hell’s Kitchen has had a long history of Irish immigrants being bullied by Irish gangsters, from the Gopher Gang of the late 1800s, to Prohibition’s Owney “The Killer” Madden, to none other than the last gentleman gangster, Mickey Spillane. But none of these criminals were quite so ruthless and brutal as the likes of two poor kids born and raised in the old neighborhood in the 1940s—Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone. It’s these two young men that English covers in The Westies, from Coonan’s moving in on Spillane’s territory, his aggressive takeover of the neighborhood, Featherstone’s teaming up with and becoming Coonan’s righthand and muscle, and all of the chaotic violence, lawbreaking, and death that followed.

English’s ensemble cast also includes such infamous gangsters, bookies, and loansharks as Ruby Stein, Joseph “Mad Dog” Sullivan, Eddie “The Butcher” Cummiskey, Tom “The Greek” Kapatos, Jimmy McElroy, Billy Beattie, Richie Ryan, Kevin Kelly, Kenny Shannon, and Billy Bokun. He retraces the origin of how the Westies became known for “doing the Houdini” with their victims, how they bankrupt the Intrepid museum, ran the docks and local teamsters, when old-time beefs with Italian-American mafias were turned on their head once Coonan took over Hell’s Kitchen and started getting friendly with the “greaseballs” (much to the aggravation of his Irish brethren), and the murder that ultimately caused Featherstone to become an informant and be the downfall of the last Irish mob of New York City.

I really loved this book. Not the content, per se, as these people were just some of the lowest and most terrible, who perpetuated a near endless cycle of both disorganized and organized crime, but the history of this New York neighborhood, its everyday working citizens, and how English presents his seemingly endless knowledge on the topic of American crime. The writing is easily digestible, captivating, and, as English notes: features dialogue that is taken directly from transcripts and wiretaps, as well as some dramatic re-creation, when testimonies or recollections were found to be conflicting.

For readers interested in true crime or more current New York historical events, and for those with a strong stomach for descriptions of violence, drug use, and plenty of coarse language, I highly recommend picking up English’s expert writing.

[Christine]

If you anre into true crime, or gang life then this might be an interesting book for you. The author manages to paint both a realistic and relatable view of the characters/individuals involved. While I will never personally become involved in criminal activity, this author manages to bring me inside the mind of many of the individuals involved, as well as many of the challenges that they faced that led them to the paths that they follow. The author starts with a single story line. Then, when that storyline interacts with another character, he backtracks to the beginning of the second characters or next characters storyline. This results in a lot of time jumps that can be a little hard to follow if you aren’t paying attention. This book essentially follows three generations of the Irish mob in New York, and New Jersey through the conception, heyday, and finally demise. Internal rivalries and external troubles are both explored as well as the steps that the police and FBI took to eventually bring down these organizations. Well, I found this extremely fascinating. I also found it to be a bit of a slog to get through. If you were bothered by racial, slurs and cultural rivalries, probably don’t listen to this. At this time, the Irish individuals involved did not consider the Italians “white“. This is a very real and upsetting. Look at a time in New York City history, so it probably is something that should not be forgotten lest it be repeated.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Westies is a superficial, somewhat sensationalized account of certain gangsters of Irish descent who dominated and terrorized Hell's Kitchen in the 1980s. Much of the material appears verbatim in another English book called Paddy Whacked.

While English writes in an engaging style that moves the narrative along at a good clip, there is much repetition, as if English doesn't expect his readers to retain what came before. He seems to have little interest in understanding the "why" of the events portrayed. Further, he uses what appears to be huge chunks of transcripts of secretly recorded conversations (which were ultimately used to help convict the gang members on racketeering charges) instead of telling the story himself with judicious recourse to exemplary excerpts. The outcome here is pretty much foreordained: eventually the code of silence of the street is broken, many snitch, many go to jail, and Rudy Giuliani launches his political career. If you are looking for an understanding of the social forces that drove Irish crime generally or this Irish mob specifically, or the psychological drivers of any of the main gangsters (or their pursuers), this book is not going to satisfy.

[Jeffrey Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Disturbing True Story of Violence and the Power of Redemption

Normally, when one thinks of gangster culture, people like Capone and Gotti and the Gambino family come to mind; or in other words, Italians and the Mafioso. This is mainly due to Hollywood, which is why when i came across The Westies, I had to read it, because i was aware of the Irish mob but didn't really know any of their stories.

I'm glad i did because the thing that makes The Westies such a good read isn't the disturbing violence of the Hell's Kitchen Irish mob and how they'd make bodies disappear, but the surprising humanity of one player in particular: Mickey Featherstone. This is really his story and how he went from Coonan's right hand man, to stool pigeon, to a new man redeemed of his past. I recommend this book to any fan of true crime, mobster tales, and stories of redemption.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect to get so attached to literal gangsters. This book was quite the emotional rollercoaster and action packed novel. I have been into true crime for a bit but had never delved into gangsterism. At first, the pace was a little slow as they explained the history of West Side gangs but it began to move faster once I reached the second part. It is so interesting to see another side of things that is not often presented in the media. I loved following the journey of the two men and I must say, they are quite the characters. This book taught me a myriad of things including the legal system, gangster business and several other things. Although it was long and dense, I very much enjoyed it and will 100% be reading English's other novels. For anyone looking to read it, it is a very compelling story and definitely worth it.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised by this book. I expected more of a regurgitation of investigative facts from the the Hells Kitchen Irish mob days. But TJ English did a really great job of ciphering through loads of content and presenting an engaging storyline. It reads somewhat like a biography (action-packed biography) of Mickey Featherstone, a key member of the Westies in the 1970s and 1980s. Lots of inexcusable violence and behavior, but I like how the author just throws it out there in a matter of fact manner. This is what happened... not good but these are the facts. At the end of the day, it was hard to put the kindle down and I was looking forward to my nightly reading sessions. So 5 stars.

[Elise Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very gripping and readable and it provided lots of great information. That said, by about 100 pages in, I decided it was going to go in the “over 500 pages” square on my book bingo card rather than the “nonfiction” square, because the whole thing felt a bit too dramatized to feel like I could legitimately call it nonfiction. The information was there, but so were strange omniscient narrator claims to know the last thoughts of someone in the moments before they died or detailed conversations between people that seem like they couldn’t possibly be known for sure by the writer, though he may know the general gist of the content of a meeting.

It was an engaging docudrama.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once the term "Westies" was popularized in the media, I figured it was an organized gang following the Cosa Nostra model. This book exposes that as an erroneous conclusion. The scams this gang perpetrated, shakedowns and kidnappings for ransom were surprisingly unsophisticated. The murders were often arbitrary and casual. As with most true crime titles, this author goes into excessive detail when he has transcripts to work with. The betrayal that leads Mickey Featherstone to testify against all his gang buddies borders on the mundane. He refused to rejoin the gang after a long stretch in prison. Seems to me you need to be ready to flee when you do that.

[Dan Mennell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great biopic of New York organised crime. I found this a very interesting and focussed read. This is mostly down to the very narrative focus the book takes. It’s very much told from a street-level, human perspective.

This also has the effect of making the acts of violence all the more shocking! There’s an almost demonic enjoyment of violence displayed by the characters that make up the Westies story. But, there’s also quite a lot of pathos and humanity here too that makes some characters quite relatable.

All in all, great read.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Westies" is the account of the Irish Mob from its formation until its end.

It starts with Mickey Featherstone's first day turning over states' evidence. The significance of this doesn't hit until the end of the book.

I grew up in the 70s, 100 miles south of where these incidents took place. I may have seen an "I love the Westies" bumper sticker driving to Northern Jersey or New York in the 80s. In Trenton, NJ, being Irish was a big deal--just like being Italian.

This book explained a lot of things in my childhood, just saying.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed

What a massive amount of material to catalogue, correlate, classify, and weave into a cohesive, understandable and engaging narrative. English did a great job. This is not an easy book to read, and it’s not like watching a movie where one can sit with eyes closed until the messy, bloody parts are over...it is hair raising, stomach turning, toe curling, creep cringing stuff.

[Martin Tupper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to live in Hell's Kitchen so this book was very interesting to me. It's hard to believe some of this stuff went on in this neighborhood of hip bars and eclectic eateries. To call these guys mafia or gangs is even a stretch. They were animals. There was no organization to them at all and they were better compared as sociopaths. But Mickey Featherstone and Jimmy Coonan are a couple of fearsome characters to behold.

[Dan Seitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a page-turner in editing and structure than his later work, English still offers a compelling overview of some very vile, cruel, greedy people and how they exploited neighborhood traditions to essentially go on a decades-long violent rampage. It's compromised somewhat by being told almost entirely from the point of view of Mickey Featherstone; it would have been nice for Jimmy Coonan to have more of a role, instead of fading almost entirely from the book.