He is an American original—a psychopath who fostered a following with a frightening mix of terror, deadly intimidation, and the deft touch of a politician who often helped a family in need meet their monthly rent. But the history shows that despite myths portraying him as a Robin Hood figure, Whitey was actually a supreme narcissist. In an Irish American neighborhood where loyalty has always been rule one, the Bulger brand was loyalty only to oneself. Whitey deconstructs Bulger’s insatiable hunger for power and control.Building on years of research, Lehr and O’Neill examine and reveal the factors and forces that created the monster. It is a portrait of evil that spans nearly a century, taking Whitey from the streets of his boyhood Southie in the 1940s to his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s to his cunning, corrupt pact with the FBI in the 1970s, and, finally, to Santa Monica, California, where for fifteen years he was hiding in plain sight as one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. This is his story.

— Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River.