Title: The Ice Man
Author: Philip Carlo
Year: 2006
Genre: True Crime
The Ice Man tells the story of Richard Kuklinski, a man at first glance who seemed to be a doting father but in reality was a top Mafia hitman who killed over 200 men. The book was chosen as my local bookshop’s, Blue Sheep Books‘, true crime book club read for this month and again prior to reading it I didn’t have any knowledge of the book or the events.
From the blurb
“Top Mafia hit man. Doting father. For 30 years, Richard ‘the Ice Man’ Kuklinski led a double life beyond anything ever seen on The Sopranos, becoming one of the most notorious professional assassins in American History whilst hosting neighbourhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey.
Kuklinski was Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano’s partner in the killing of Paul Castellano. John Gotti hired him to kill his neighbour and he was intimately involved in the killing of Jimmy Hoffa. He conducted his sadistic business with cold-hearted intensity, never disappointing his customers. For an additional price, he would make his victims suffer. By his own estimate, he killed over 200 men, taking enormous pride in his cunning and ferocity of his technique.
The Ice Man is a bone-chilling insight into the mind of one of the world’s most prolific serial killers.”
Thoughts
I think the first thing that I have to mention is this book is extremely violent and absolutely isn’t for the faint-hearted. This becomes apparent in the introductory chapter which describes Richard taking one of his victims to some caves inhabited by rats in Bucks County and leaving him there tied up and naked for the rats to feast on. Indeed this is just one very violent episode and the book has plenty of gory moments that I struggled to read through.
The book then takes us on a biography of Richard’s life, from his upbringing in an abusive household in one of the projects of New Jersey (America’s equivalent of the UK’s council houses). His father Stanley regularly beat him and his older brother Florian, killing his brother when Richard was five. Meanwhile his mother Anna, was largely indifferent to him and spent much of her time praying and not looking after her son. Anna had two more children with Stanley, Richard’s sister Roberta and another son, Joseph before Stanley largely disappeared. Richard turned to a life of crime, initially theft to get food for his siblings to eat, however he enjoyed reading true crime magazines and was regularly bullied on his estate.
One day Richard confronted one of his bullies, Charley Lane with a pipe and in a rage beat him to death. Richard disposed of and hid the body but from then on a switch changed and he became more and more involved with murder, killing people both for hire and also whenever he felt someone had “wronged” him.
I did find the book very entertaining and gripping and couldn’t put it down as you wanted to find out what happened next in Richard’s life and also how it eventually all came crashing down when a young detective, Pat Kane, managed to piece together seemingly unrelated murders committed by Richard to create a full picture of a violent serial killer.
The book does try to present Richard in a nuanced way and I think does a pretty job of presenting him as a somewhat complicated man. On the one hand he was capable of extraordinary acts of violence, yet he couldn’t stand bullies or harmed women or children which the book places a lot of emphasis on, even rescuing some children who had seemingly been trafficked by one of his associates, however the levels of violence he was capable of I think makes it pretty clear that he was beyond redemption.
In writing this review I have also read some other reviews. I’m not very familiar with Richard’s story but a number of reviews have mentioned embellishments and inaccuracies in this book although I couldn’t find specific examples but I have knocked a point off this as people who enjoy reading about the Mafia might have come across this inaccuracies. If anyone knows more about these I would love to know more in the comments down below.
However for a gripping but extremely violent read and introduction to the world of Mafiadom in America this is a very interesting start but be warned that it isn’t for the faint of heart.
