Kudos to the authors on a well written history of a pretty awful guy. ( )

Raised in south Boston in the 1930s, Bulger grew up tough in a hard neighborhood. While his brother became a politician reaching one of the highest offices in the nation, Whitey became a hoodlum and criminal. After stints in prison, he returned to Boston to resume his criminal career and became a bigwig and enforcer for the Winter Hill Gang.

In 1974, Whitey became partners in crime with Steve Flemmi who turned out to be an FBI informant. Bulger soon also became in informant, and he and Flemmi pursued their criminal pursuits with tenacity and without recourse from law enforcement. Their FBI recruiter, John Connolly, protected them each time, citing that taking down the Italian mafia was of upmost importance and these two would help the FBI achieve that.

All was well for Bulger and Flemmi for years. They were thieves, embezzlers, extortionists, and murders with impunity. Eventually, enough law enforcement agencies got after them that the FBI could no longer protect them. Flemmi was arrested in 1994 while Bulger fled with his girlfriend, Cathy Greig, becoming a fugitive for 16 years. Both Flemmi and Connolly provided details regarding their illegal activities, and they were both convicted of murder as well as many other charges.

Many accused the FBI of not effectively looking for Bulger and allowing him to stay on the lam. Not until 2010 when a new task force team was assembled did things start to fall into place in trying to capture Bulger and Greig. Resources were once again placed into the manhunt, and it took this new task force less than two years to find them.

Greig and Bulger are now serving prison terms. Greig is set to be released in 2019 while Whitey will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy put together a powerful book with "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice." The two Boston Globe reporters had a gold mine of material and do a great job portraying the rise and fall of the gangster who ruled Southie.

By the time Whitey was captured, most of mystic of this "gentleman gangster" had eroded. So, I found the book even more powerful in its portrayal of an utterly corrupt FBI and Justice Department. The law didn't just allow Whitey and Steve "The Rifleman" Flemmi to murder with impunity, it set some of those crimes in motion. A terrifying idea to find the Boston FBI office was no better than the mobsters it was allegedly pursuing.

This made for a fascinating, though occasionally too detailed, read. ( )