Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob

Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob | Edward J. Mackenzie, Phyllis Karas | Much More Truthful than Kevin Weeks' "Brutal"

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Street Soldier: My...

	Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob Edward J. Mackenzie, Phyllis Karas Steerforth, 2004 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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For decades the FBI let James ?Whitey? Bulger get away with murder, allowing him continued control of his criminal enterprise in exchange for information. He went on the lam in 1995 and today follows top-ranked Osama bin Laden on the FBI?s Ten Most Wanted List.
Edward J. MacKenzie, Jr. was a drug dealer and enforcer who would do just about anything for Bulger. In this compelling eyewitness account, Eddie Mac delivers the goods on his one-time boss and on such former associates as Stephen ?The Rifleman? Flemmi and turncoat FBI agent John Connolly.
Street Soldier is also a story of the search for family, for acceptance, for respect, loyalty, and love. Abandoned by his parents at the age of four, Mackenzie became a ward of the state, suffered physical and sexual abuse, and eventually drifted into Bulger?s orbit.
The Eddie Mac who emerges in these pages is complex: An enforcer who was also a national kick-boxing champion; a womanizer who fought for custody of his daughters; a kid never given much of a chance who went on, as an adult, to earn a college degree in three years; a man who lived by a strict code of loyalty but also helped set up a sting operation that would net one of the largest hauls of cocaine ever seized.
Street Soldier is as disturbing and fascinating as a crime scene, as heart-stopping as a bar fight, and at times as darkly comic as Quentin Tarantino?s Pulp Fiction or Martin Scorsese?s Good Fellas.

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Best of Show

Better than the Kevin Weeks expose, and far grittier than the journalistic looks at the Bulger gang, this one takes the cake for depravity with readable writing to make it go down like acid. As Mob tales go, the Boston version is more blue collar, but every bit as riveting as insider looks at the best of the New York gangs. The early section on the author's depraved and deprived childhood is particularly chilling. If only these guys had been so literary back when they were actually gangsters, maybe they wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble.

Much More Truthful than Kevin Weeks' "Brutal"

I'm an Irish-Catholic guy in his 40's who grew up in Boston in the late 60's and 70's. I've read Streeet Soldier and Brutal several times each, and I personally believe much more of what Eddie Mac has to say about the "real" Whitey, as opposed to the relatively reverant tone in which Weeks still speaks of Whitey. Sure, Eddie Mac and Weeks are both equally dangerous sociopaths, and will surely go to Hell (assuming it exists) for all the evil they inflicted on their fellow human beings over the years. Having said that, Weeks still seems to be loyal to Whitey, and probably knows exactly where he is hiding out these days. For that reason, I don't believe a word he says when he defends Whitey against allegations that he was a rapist, a child molester, etc. Eddie Mac definitely gives the reader more insight into what Whitey was really like...and isn't that why we all read these books, anyway?

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Rough and tumble of a Southie bad guy

There are far too many ways that our world produces guys like Eddie Mackenzie. Born to parents who were too young, wild and restless to be good caregivers, he was thrust into foster home, where abuse and neglect were more the rule than the exception. It was all but inevitable that he would grow up seething with rage and a thirst for revenge. Mackenzie's Southie upbringing brought him into contact with the kill-or-be-killed mentality that propelled him toward brawling and martial arts -- used for self-protection as well as for unleashing his inner demons -- then into crime and drugs and finally into the icy grip of killer Whitey Bulger.

Mackenzie's story is fascinating and horrifying. Every page brims over with tales of fights, beatings, narrow escapes and strategic surrenders. The picture Mackenzie paints of the hyper-tough poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Southie are repulsively fascinating. The nuances and subtleties of the code of "honor" -- rat to save your skin, but never on your friends -- is worthy of a Shakespearean plot.

Mackenzie's story overlaps with that of the MacDonald family, unforgettably penned by Michael Patrick MacDonald in "All Souls." No surprise: Mackenzie and the MacDonalds were pals during the same volatile period. In fact, readers of both books will recognize a few of the same incidents. But while MacDonald's family was decimated by the drugs and violence Bulger brought to the neighborhood, Mackenzie thrived -- selling drugs, doing enforcement duty for Whitey and reaping the rewards (booze, girls and respect) that flowed from his ties to the mobster.

"Street Soldier" is a quick, exciting and full of violent action. Sometimes, it seems that "Eddie Mack" revels too much, even in hindsight, in the mayhem he created. The almost sexual pleasure he gets from feeling a bone break under his hands is disturbing. For those with lesser reservoirs of hatred and rage than the author, we will be glad we were not born into his cauldron of barely civilized violence. Mackenzie's book is also an act of courage. He names many, many names and ties Bulger and his associates to innumerable murders, tortures and drug deals. His motive, as the reader will quickly discover, is revenge over the discovery that Bulger, the ultimate enforcer of the neighborhood code of silence, himself broke it repeatedly to save his own skin.

Mackenzie is a tough and scary guy, though with a soft side. He dearly loves his daughters and tries hard to elevate himself from his hoodlum past. His book is at once a memoir of a life gone terribly awry, a documentary of the criminal behavior (his own and others) that afflicted Southie in the last 30 years, and an indictment of the authorities, notably the FBI, that for their own reasons allowed the killing, drugging and violence to continue without letup. An honest, eye-opening and disturbing book.

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