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  Italy’s Most Powerful Mafias:...

  Charles River Editors

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  The word “mafia,” Sicilian in origin, is synonymous with Italy, but Italy is home to several different mafias, with three being particularly notorious. While the Cosa Nostra of western Sicily is the most infamous, other powerful groups include the ferocious ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria and the Camorra, the third-largest mafia, which is active in Naples and the Campania region. A “mafia” is loosely defined as a criminal organization that is interested in social, economic and political power, combining elements of a traditional secret society with those of a business, but further levels of nuance are necessary in order to understand these groups. In a general sense, this is because each mafia creates a myth about the development of the organization, which becomes like an unquestionable truth. In essence, part of what makes its members so completely loyal to it is also what makes outsiders so utterly afraid of it. 
  While all three mafias have initiation rituals dating to the 19th century, the oldest of the three belongs to the Camorra. The rituals date back to 1850, as the Camorra was taking shape in the prisons of southern Italy. In this simple but profound ritual, the new member was told to take an oath over crossed knives and then made to have a dagger fight with another man (either another possible initiate or a current member). However, the blades would be wrapped leaving just the point exposed, so that the only objective would be to draw a faint trace of blood, after which the fight would end. This ritual ceased in 1912, around the time that the Neapolitan Honored Society dissolved itself, and as it reconstituted itself in various formations over the course of the century, it never again returned to those more antiquated rituals. Instead, the group began to exist more as a loose network of criminals, all working for their own enrichment.

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  The Business - Talking with...

  Dick Hobbs

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  Professor Dick Hobbs is a leading commentator on the culture of crime and criminality. East End born and bred, he is a fascinating dichotomy of the criminal and the intellectual world, allowing him a unique insight into a subject that holds fascination for so many. When he was growing up, the East End was rocking with dock strikes, thievery and the kind of family values practiced by the Krays the Tibbs and a few dozen other outlaw clans. Violence was everywhere Crime was an unavoidable fact of life. However, his real education in Plaistow taught him that the real essence of illegal capitalism is to be found amongst the poor bloody infantry of the crime world; the jump up merchants, lorry highjackers, warehouse thieves, and middle-market drug dealers. These are the people with whom he has spent most of his professional life, and along with more exalted villains such as Mad Frankie Frazer and Charlie Richardson, these are the characters who will feature in the book, weaving the stories of these fearsome gangsters with the history and evolution of the UK underworld.

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  Hard Cases – True Stories of...

  Gene Kerrigan

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  From crime to verdict, award-winning journalist Gene Kerrigan tells the brutal stories of some of Ireland's most notorious murders, kidnappings and violent attacks
  
  Hard Cases is a collection of startling stories about the reality of crime and court cases in Ireland. In these stories, there are no crime bosses with quaint nicknames; the police don't collect convenient clues that tell them whodunnit. Instead, it contains cases both famous and obscure in which the outcome is sometimes just, sometimes unsettling and always complicated, in which there are no easy answers and no simple victims.
  
  In Hard Cases, you will delve into the criminal underworld of Ireland, starting with the tale of Dessie O'Hare which records in breathtaking detail the inside story of a notorious kidnapping.
  
  There's the story of Karl Crawley, a sometimes gentle, sometimes wild young Dublin man who found a shocking way of fighting back against authority.
  
  Then there's the story of Peter Matthews, who went into a police station to answer questions about a petty crime and ended up dead – with gardaí covering up the reason why.
  
  Hard Cases also exposes the story behind some Ireland's most infamous crime scenes: how did Fr Molloy come to die in the bedroom of his married friends? What happened when Christy Payne came home to find his daughter's boyfriend wielding a hatchet?
  
  Hard Cases is a must-read – revealing the true stories behind some of Ireland's most famous headlines and exposing the machinations of the Irish justice system, it is a shocking and fascinating snapshot of Irish crime, criminals and court cases.

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  Early Graves - A True Story of...

  Thomas H. Cook

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  Shocking true crime from the Edgar Award–winning author. "Powerful . . . A frightening close-up of sociopathic personalities at their most deadly" (Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter).Evil has a way of finding itself. How else could you explain the bond between Alvin and Judith Ann Neelley, who consecrated their marriage in blood? Before the killings started, they restricted themselves to simple mischief: prank calls, vandalism, firing guns at strangers' houses. Gradually their ambition grew, until one day at the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, they spotted Lisa Ann Millican. Three days after Lisa Ann disappeared, the thirteen-year-old girl was found shot and pumped full of liquid drain cleaner. In between her abduction and her death, she was subjected to innumerable horrors. And she was only the first to die. Drawing on police records and extensive interviews, Thomas H. Cook recounts the story of Judith Ann Neelley, who at nineteen became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death row.

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  Tunnel Vision - A True Story of...

  N. P. Simpson

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  “Vivid prose plunges the reader into the politically fraught, self-contained world of a military base” and a chilling true case of triple murder (Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine).   Carlton “Butch” Smith was a troubled teenager who’d been kicked out of school for aggressive behavior. His parents lived at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and when Butch was home with them, his life was fairly normal. But that all changed on August, 24, 1981, when Butch’s sister, aunt, and cousin were found slain in his parents’ house. It was a horrifying crime that shook the Marine base community, not to mention the Smith family—especially when Butch was named the prime suspect.   In Tunnel Vision, reporter and true crime author N. P. Simpson delves into this young man’s harrowing past. She also provides a detailed chronicle of the grisly murders and the complex case that followed—a case of conflicting confessions, a mysterious second suspect who was never found, and difficult questions of jurisdiction between military, state, and federal courts.

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  To Be an FBI Special Agent

  Henry M. Holden

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  FBI Special Agents are specially trained personnel, chosen from an extensive pool of applicants because they possess specific areas of expertise, including counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cybercrime. To Be an FBI Special Agent provides all-encompassing coverage of the training process. Candid photos of the FBI's training school in Quantico, Virginia, give the reader an unprecedented look behind the scenes. For those truly committed to a career with the FBI, this is the book that will show and tell them how to get there. For everybody else, it is the one must-have book on the subject.

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