The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit FoxMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was intrigued by the title of the book after seeing it mentioned it somewhere. But the book itself is disappointing. As many other Goodreads reviews note, there is just not a lot about Mrs. Mandelbaum in a book purported to be about her rise and fall. A good chunk of the text is taken up by accounts and narratives of other people and situations. There is a chapter on the Pinkertons, for example. Why? Because Pinkerton detectives where instrumental in finally entrapping Mandelbaum. But do we need the biography of Pinkerton himself and how he grew his famous detective agency? We get a chapter on the biography of her lawyers. There is a history of Jonathan Wilde, the infamous London thief-catcher. Interesting, but the relevance is weak.
Some of have noted that the book is better billed as a history the rise of organized crime in New York City more generally, but it is hardly even that. The history presented is rather thin. The author frequently delves into oversimplified and often one-side accounts of Gilded Aged economics and politics. I don't know if the written text has notes, but it was disappointing to that for the most the only references in the audio text were something akin to "a historian notes."
The last chapters of the book that focused on the capture and trial of Mandelbaum and then her exile in Canada are the most interesting and relevant to the book's purpose. Not quite enough to redeem to the book, but enough to make it worth finishing.
The author had the material for an interesting long-form magazine article, just not a book length treatment.
(on a positive note, the narrator Saskia Maarleveld was very good)
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