Summary and Analysis of Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal: Based on the Book by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill

By Worth Books

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Black Masstells you what you need to know—before or after you read Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s book.

Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. 
 
This short summary and analysis of Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Detailed timeline of important events
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

 
About Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s Black Mass:
 
The New York Times–bestselling Black Mass is a groundbreaking true crime story about the Mafia, the FBI, and the Irish Mob in between them. Journalists Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill expose a decades-long partnership between FBI agent John Connolly and notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger.
 
Connolly taps childhood friend-turned–Irish mobster Bulger to be an informant. But soon enough, Bulger is the one pulling the strings, convincing Connolly to cover up his dirty deeds. This corrupt deal results in a web of crimes including racketeering, drugs, and murder, all leading to an FBI rocked by scandal when the truth comes out.
 
Shocking and enlightening, Black Mass is an Edgar Award–winning book that magnifies the fine line between law and lawlessness.
 
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504043755

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Book preview

Contents

Context

Overview

Summary

Timeline

Cast of Characters

Direct Quotes and Analysis

Trivia

What’s That Word?

Critical Response

About Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill

For Your Information

Bibliography

Copyright

Context

Due to the popularity of Hollywood’s mob stories—The Godfather trilogy, GoodFellas, The Sopranos—when we think of organized crime, we tend to think of the Italian Mafia. However, the Irish have had a significant criminal presence, too, beginning with the street gangs of late-nineteenth-century New York and Boston and lasting through Prohibition and the rise of the Italian gangs in the early twentieth century. In South Boston, James J. Whitey Bulger came of age at a time when Irish mob members were not only fighting with one another, but also against a growing Italian influence spreading from New York City. For Bulger, the offer of using the FBI to provide protection for himself and to get rid of his enemies was a lure he couldn’t resist, even though it meant becoming a rat, one of the most despicable people on earth according to the Irish mob culture.

On the flip side, Bulger’s heyday—the late 1970s and early 1980s—also saw the rise of the Wall Street era, when a flashy lifestyle was seen as an indicator of a job well done. FBI agent John Connolly viewed himself as successful in those terms, and he expected the commensurate rewards.

Black Mass (2000) was a New York Times bestseller and won an Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. An exposé of the notorious case that expanded on a series of Boston Globe articles, the unbelievable true crime story by journalists Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill read more like a novel than nonfiction. In 2015, it was adapted for a film starring Johnny Depp.

Since the original publication of Black Mass, a great number books on the Bulger have followed, some penned by other reporters, some by people involved either in Bulger’s criminal underworld or in the police investigations into it. In the words of Lehr and O’Neill, Bulger has become a genre.

Overview

The pursuit of justice can have darker implications when winning becomes more important than upholding the law. Using firsthand reports, transcripts of wiretaps, court