Inside New York's Irish Mob

The Westies

T J English's debut brings the near-unbelievable story of New York's notorious American-Irish mobsters, the Westies, to shocking yet compelling life in this true crime classic.

A fast-moving tale of criminal corruption in which, for a change, the good guys win... English pulls no punches

Sterling social history... the author's skillful reporting makes the most of his subject

Will shock even the most hardened readers

A fascinating look into an Irish-American criminal enterprise that may not have rivalled the Mafia in sophistication, but certainly surpassed them in terror

T.J. English is a noted journalist and screenwriter, and is the author of a number of other books about organised crime, including Paddy Whacked, Old Bones and Shallow Graves, Born to Kill, The Havana Mob and Dangerous Rhythms. He has written for numerous publications, including Esquire and Playboy, while his screenwriting credits include work on NYPD Blue and Homicide. The Westies was his first book and became a US bestseller, launching his career and establishing him as an expert on the multi-ethnic nature of organised crime in America. He lives in New York City.

Forget Peaky Blinders - meet The Westies . . . 
 
Even among the Mob, the Westies were feared. 
 
Growing out of a partnership between two sadistic thugs - James Coonan and Mickey Featherstone - the Irish-American gang dominated the decaying slice of New York City's West Side known as Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s and '80s. 
 
They excelled in extortion, numbers running, loansharking and drug-peddling, and they became the most notorious gang in the history of organized crime - then prosecutor Rudolf Giuliani calling them 'the most savage organisation in the long history of New York street gangs'. Upping the ante on brutality and depravity, their speciality when it came to punishment and killings was dismemberment. 
 
Theirs was a reign that would last almost twenty years. And their end would come as their own violent natures got the better of them and precipitated a downfall as infamous and brutal as their rise. 
 
This revised and updated edition of T J English's debut brings the near-unbelievable story of the Westies to shocking yet compelling life. The Westies is recognised as a true crime classic.

T.J. English

An epic look at the racial animus, fear and hatred that characterised a troubled decade . . . English peels back the underlying turmoil that led to the violent period and the unaddressed social ills that remain to this day

Race, Murder and a Generation on the Edge

It was a time of hope and desperation, a time of reckoning . . . 
 
In the early 1960s, the Mad Men era, a mood of menace gripped New York City. The crime rate was growing and violence was becoming a daily reality for citizens in every neighbourhood. At the centre of the unrest was a poisonous divide between two camps: the deeply corrupt and racist police of the era and the African American community. 
 
Then, on 28 August 1963 - the day on which Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared, 'I have a dream' - two young white women were murdered in their Manhattan apartment. The killings struck fear through the city and ignited a ten-year saga of racial violence and unrest. 
 
An epic true-life story of murder, injustice and defiance, The Savage City draws on interviews with participants and extensive research to tell the stories of three very different New Yorkers - an innocent man wrongly accused of murder, a corrupt cop and a militant Black Panther - and to explore this traumatic decade in the city's history.

T.J. English

Books by T.J. English

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