Obsessed with True Crime discussion

Sorry to be a bit late. If people have trouble finishing the challenge in March let me know and I'll extend it.

Gangs

Not mafia, but gangs like, Hell's Angels, The Bloods, Crips.

I thought of this as I was looking through my books and saw a small book I bought some time ago about motorcycle gangs in I think, Canada. I also have a book about a gang in the Appalachian Mountains.

Happy reading!

Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member

The Real Gangs of New York

The Gangs of New York

The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago

The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit 1910-1945
Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang _might be the same book.

Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs

Street Life: Poverty, Gangs, and a Ph.D.

Always Running

Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club

I make no claim as to the readability of these books or if they even fit the challenge or if they all are true crime, I just did a search.

So a regular conspiracy wouldn't count but an actual organized-crime type of deal would?

Yes, for the challenge, gang related.

This has been a busy week, so I'm not going to get this done in March, but I started Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.

On the last day of March I stumbled across something for this challenge: The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World. I daresay I will not finish by midnight...

Fishface wrote: "On the last day of March I stumbled across something for this challenge: The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World. I daresay I wi..."

I've been wanting to read this one. Tell me how you like it.

I will extend this since I haven't even started mine.

Did their exploits really shock the world? If so, I missed this event.
This doesn't sound like a book I want to read. Entitled rich white teens acting badly? Meh. Give me a rabid psychopath instead.

Hari wrote: "Did their exploits really shock the world? If so, I missed this event.
This doesn't sound like a book I want to read. Entitled rich white teens acting badly? Meh. Give me a rabid psychopath instead."

Well, the whole question here is whether or not they ARE rabid psychopaths. I never heard about this deal until the book and movie came out, but apparently if you were on the right websites you were tracing their every move on security cams as they broke in -- many times -- to Paris Hilton's place, Orlando Bloom's, Lindsay Lohan's, and on and on. The Internet apparently knew about the Paris Hilton break-ins before Paris did herself. People are so fixated on every move of a B-list celebrity like her that the thieves were using exactly the same websites that were tracking them to track their targeted victims -- finding out when Lindsay or Orlando would be out of town and so forth. I mean the whole thing was totally ridiculous.

Still, Fishface,
There's a qualitative difference between stealing from the glitterati and the things John Wayne Gacy is known for.

Hari wrote: "Still, Fishface,
There's a qualitative difference between stealing from the glitterati and the things John Wayne Gacy is known for."

No argument there! But Gacy wasn't merely a sociopath. A lot of people who aren't sociopathic at all are so paraphilic that they do similar things -- maybe over and over -- and then feel terrible and turn themselves in to the police and refuse to defend themselves in court and so forth. Gacy had an Axis II, Cluster B personality disorder (that group includes Borderline PD, which he definitely had, and Antisocial PD, which he also definitely had). But he also had a paraphilia the size of Texas. Without it, he could be as borderline and sociopathic as he wanted and all those guys would still be alive today.

These kids in the Bling Ring have a rather different fixation.

The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World, Nancy Jo Sales

3 stars

This was a fun, lite true-crime read for the monthly challenge (on the subject of organized crime). The writing was very good and the story moved right along, snagging occasionally on the rocks of the character's inarticulate blathering. Even the attorneys didn't make a lot of sense when they talked and I would have to go back and re-read to puzzle it out. With that said, I enjoyed this one and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a true-crime case without a lot of gore and massacree. In fact, this was marked "YA" at the library, so dive right in and fear not.

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh
3 stars

The author was a college student writing a term paper about gangs and decided to immerse himself in the culture to get a better understanding of what gang living was about. He had not grown up in poverty so most things were a surprise to him. I thought it was amazing he didnt get killed, as some people thought he was an undercover cop. The book doesn't really get into the personal lives of the gang members, but deals more with what happens in a gang and why the culture perpetuates. It was amazing to me that ambulances ,and often times the police, wont enter the ghettos. It was disheartening to read that not much is being done to make life better for the people that live there.

Growing up a farm girl in a rural area this book is as far away from the life I have lead as a person can get. I cant fathom how people can live this way and am grateful for that fact.

Koren wrote: "Growing up a farm girl in a rural area this book is as far away from the life I have lead as a person can get. I cant fathom how people can live this way and am grateful for that fact. "

They probably would feel just as weird living on a farm in the country as you would in 'the hood'!!

Fishface wrote: "Koren wrote: "Growing up a farm girl in a rural area this book is as far away from the life I have lead as a person can get. I cant fathom how people can live this way and am grateful for that fact..."

Ha! You are funny!

AAAAAH! GOAT! RUUUNNNNNNNNNN!

Fishface wrote: "AAAAAH! GOAT! RUUUNNNNNNNNNN!"

We never had goats. Maybe a chicken.

No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns
2 stars

My second book for the challenge was quite a bit different from the first. In the first the gang members were fairly friendly. They were tough but not nearly as tough as the characters in the second book. The first book the person infiltrating was a college student. In the second it was an undercover cop. The first dealt with inner city gang members. The second book dealt with the Hell's Angels. One thing that I was puzzled about: I had always heard that the Hell's Angels were not a violent group but in this book they were more like the mob.

Here's the rest of my review:

An undercover cop infiltrates the Hell's Angels for two years. I would have liked this book better if he would have delved more into the backgrounds of the Angels and how they came about joining the group. Instead, it was mostly conversations peppered with a lot of cuss words (even though at the end he states that a lot of cuss words were left out). I touched on how his undercover work effected his marriage and family and I would have liked him to go into that a little deeper. This was a tough group of characters and made me feel he was talking about mobsters instead of bikers.

As far as I am aware, Koren, motorcycle gangs are pretty much like the Mob on two wheelers. They're into everything from drug trafficking to protection rackets.

Fishface wrote: "As far as I am aware, Koren, motorcycle gangs are pretty much like the Mob on two wheelers. They're into everything from drug trafficking to protection rackets."

It would be interesting to see if there are any books where gang members are good guys.

Koren wrote: "Fishface wrote: "AAAAAH! GOAT! RUUUNNNNNNNNNN!"

We never had goats. Maybe a chicken."

"AAAAAH! CHICKEN!! RUUUNNNNNNNNNN!"