Sleepers

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Description

The true story of a group of four boys brought up in New York's notorious Mafia-run Hell's Kitchen during the 1960s. After nearly causing a man's death, they were sent to a reformatory where guards routinely brutalized them, leaving them with nothing but an undying loyalty to one another. Review: Fact or fiction?

As you'd expect from a former reporter on the New York Daily News, this story of a tough childhood on New York's meanest streets is written in a muscular prose style which pulls no punches. As a boy, in the 1960s, Carcaterra and his three closest friends enjoyed running wild through mob-controlled mid-Manhattan.

It all seemed like exhilarating fun until one prank went too far and a man died. The four boys were sent to a reformatory school where rape and beating were routine. Two of them turned to a life of crime; another became a Prosecutor in a District Attorney's office. Carcaterra forged a living from tabloid journalism.

They were reunited in court when the two criminals shot dead one of the former tormentors and the four grown men joined forces to claim justice for the violation of their childhood. (Kirkus UK)