You can find the NPR story here, but the audio won't be available until 9 AM EDT. Here's a picture of Mr. Bulger:
And here's what he looked like when he was young, possibly his first arrest:
I don't know why, but people like this fascinate me. They're evil, sure, and we'd all be better off without them, but they're also great characters, and I wonder what it is that drives them. Whitey Bulger, John Gotti, John Dillinger, Al Capone. America has a great history of mob bosses, and we love to romanticize them in film and fiction.
Don Vito Corleone, Neil McCauley, Keyser Soze, Marsellus Wallace, the list goes on. What is it about these men (and they're always men) that fascinates our collective consciousness so?
I don't know. I'm no psychologist, but I do know that I love the stories. It's not the violence, or the machismo, or the misogyny, I mean I'm a pacifist and a big wuss in real life anyway, but there's something about these stories, something classical, almost chivalrous in a twisted, Americanized way.
If you love books and you're interesting in this kind of novel you should look up Elmore Leonard, Richard Price, Mario Puzo, James Ellroy, Patricia Highsmith, and Steig Larsson.
I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you read crime novels? Do you watch crime films? Did I forget any great crime writers?
