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)

An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally roiled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Kirkus Reviews)

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.

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.

When friendship runs deeper than blood

An unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty and revenge
Lorenzo, Michael, John and Tommy shared everything - the laughter and the bruises of an impoverished childhood on New York's violent West Side. Until one of their pranks misfired and they were sent to a reformatory school.
Twelve months of systematic mental, physical and sexual abuse left the boys transformed for ever.
Eleven years later, one of them had become a journalist, one a lawyer - and the other two killers for the mob. In a chance encounter they came face to face with one of their torturers and shot him dead in front of several witnesses. The trial that followed brought the four friends together again in one last, audacious stand - and a courtroom climax as gripping as any John Grisham novel.
'A compulsive true story' The Times

'Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story' The Washington Post

'Compelling' USA Today

'Fabulous, unbelievably good' Entertainment Weekly

'A brilliant, troubling, important book' Jonathan Kellerman

Lorenzo Carcaterra was born in New York where he still lives. He was a reporter on the New York Daily News before he wrote A Safe Place. His second book, Sleepers, became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

2008-03-05 Outstanding!

What an amazing book. I have no criticisms but i really wish i'd read the book before the film. The film followed the book very closely and i knew what was going to happen when reading it, although it still managed to shock me. It still had me gripped which shows it is a fantastic read.