Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal Hardcover – May 15, 2018

If you think you know the story of crack, gangs and violence in New York City in the 1990s, think again and read Sex Money Murder, a powerful chronicle of the rise and fall of one of the most violent modern gangs in New York. Richly detailed and meticulously documented, SMM reflects years of research and dogged reporting from author Jonathan Green, a seasoned journalist with an eye and an ear for taut storytelling. I was one of Green's readers for the book, and watched with excitement as SMM took shape. This is no run-of-the-mill, true crime history based on police blotters and court documents. Extensive interviews Green conducted with gang members, detectives and prosecutors who brought down SMM anchor the book and give a vitality and clarity that would otherwise be impossible to capture. In one section, for example, Green describes how Emilio "Pipe" Romero stood over the corpse of a man named Kiron, who had been shot by another SMM member. "Pipe noticed that a single spot of blood had landed and spread on the clean white toe of Kiron's Nikes." Such vivid moments routinely made their way into Green's notebook, and from there, into the pages of the book. At the heart of SMM -- both the book and the gang -- is a place dear to its members but virtually unknown in the wealthy avenues of Manhattan: the Soundview Houses, a geographically isolated, economic throttled public housing development in the Bronx. Green puts the flourishing criminal enterprise of SMM into the context it deserves, documenting how the racist architect of modern New York, Robert Moses, deliberately cut off Soundview from the rest of the city, creating an environment in which opportunity withered and poverty and crime flourished. It's in Soundview's bleak alleys and rank stairwells that SMM sprouted, its teenage founders giddy with the allure of drug wealth and drunk from the fearful respect that accompanied their willingness to unleash violent retribution for the most trivial slight. From Soundview's pebbly rooftop, the gangsters look down on the domain they terrorize, and they like what they see. It is a head-spinning cast of characters, but the book largely revolves around five characters. On the gangster side of the ledger are SMM founders Shawn aka "Suge," "Pipe" Romero and Peter "Pistol Pete" Rollock, who came up together in Soundview. On the law enforcement side, there's U.S. prosecutor John O'Malley and New York City police detective Pete Forcelli. Make no mistake: Green doesn't fall into the trap of portraying the characters as one-dimensional "super-predators," to use the flawed 1990s shorthand for ultra-violent youth. Yes, SMM is ruthless and merciless, but the gang also lived by a code -- albeit a flawed one -- that revolved around a kind of twisted loyalty to Soundview, their island of geographic and economic isolation. The gangsters fetishize violence, but they also have loves and regrets, remorse and -- in some cases -- redemption of sorts. Some of the most surprising moments in the book come when the orbits of SMM members briefly intersect with well-known names in pop culture -- Nas, Puff Daddy, Tyra Banks -- bringing into relief how the influence of the gang reached far beyond the Bronx. Green's sympathetic storytelling also extends to the prosecutors, depicting them as hard-nosed but willing to pierce the gang's veil of secrecy and violence to appeal to the good -- as well as the thirst for self-preservation -- in the young men they prosecuted. Perhaps most importantly, Green reveals how prosecutors realized that they could apply federal conspiracy laws in new and creative ways to bring down SMM, in much the same way as the Italian mob. The book is as unflinching as the triggermen and OGs that Green writes about, and SMM can be hard to read -- the violence is real and graphic, and the lack of remorse for odious actions can be infuriating. But it combines the best elements of narrative journalism with the history and context that this fraught moment in the 1990s demands. It's a complex and nuanced story that deserves to be told with the advantage of hindsight. Green achieves that, and much more.

I might never have read such a book but I know the author personally, and met him in Springfield, Massachusetts, my hometown, which features in the book. I read his book "Murder in the High Himalaya," as I have been to Nepal several times and am interested in its history. But a book about a bunch of gang bangers, drug addicts, thieves and murderers? I am now so glad I read it and applaud Jonathan Green on many levels. Green opens our eyes to an underworld that few Americans know. The story itself is gripping--we've all heard about the cocaine epidemics of the 1990s but most do not know the story behind the epidemics. You will after reading this. The writing is superb, nuanced, detailed, crisp; but the story-telling is the masterpiece. How does Green make us feel pity for these amoral, ruthless adults? By going back to their childhoods, their environments, their families, to expose how these failed structures produced lost children, who knew nothing in their lives but drugs and crime. This book is about relationships: the relationships each child had to their impoverished and crime-ridden project--Soundview; the relationships of criminal to criminal; between the criminal and the gang; gang to rival gang; authorities to gangs; and above all, criminal to cop... detective/fed O'Malley and NYPD's Forcelli. The book weaves all the relationships together deftly and intimately to show the rise and fall of each criminal and ultimately, the gang and the cocaine epidemic. And how each character influenced each other, for better or worse. It's a profound examination of personal stories that intersect and interweave, until at last you arrive at the relationships Green himself developed with each character. There are absolute good guys and bad guys yet Green, while not allowing anyone off the hook, is able to unveil a totality of humanity--with all its base love, evil, depravity-- while he chronicles the heinous crimes, subsequent captures, trials and downfall of SMM.As Green wrote to me, I now have an inkling of what my brother, an upstanding citizen who was a dedicated cop for 32 years, has gone through. The police put their lives on the line each day they deal with gangs and drugs, trying even to protect the gangs' own family, and even the gang members themselves from their own hollow future.I couldn't put the book down. Extremely well written, masterfully told, sad and true. Green has dedicated five years of extraordinary research to create a book and story that should be made into a movie so everyone can know this history, lest it is ever repeated.

Really great exposition of one of the most notorious crews during the transition of 80s crack epidemic New York to the 90s and the federal clampdown on drug crews trying to carry on the hustler's dream of the 80s