Uncle Harold the Hit Man

The recent New Yorkerarticle by journalist Eric Konigsbergabout his family's spectacular black sheep—an uncle who was a hit man for the Mafia and is serving a life sentence in Auburn maximum security prison in upstate New York—inspired an immediate flurry of interest among publishers, which ended up with HarperCollins executive editor David Hirsheywinning an auction for a book that will expand the story. None of the players was talking money (Hirshey said, "I've taken a vow of omerta"), but no one could doubt a healthy six figures was involved. The seller of Blood Relations: The Secret History of My Uncle Haroldwas agent Sloan Harrisat ICM, and Scribner was the underbidder in the two-day sale of world rights. The shame of such a relative in a Jewish family was intense, and Konigsberg will deal in the book with this issue and the lengths to which his family went to keep the secret of Uncle Harold. Konigsberg will also, says Hirshey, investigate some of his uncle's secrets, including claims that he sold arms in Africa and South America, was once hired to kill Robert Kennedy and took part, as a member of the Irgun secret army in Israel, in a raid that wiped out some relocated Nazis. Konigsberg continues to visit his enigmatic uncle in jail, despite being subjected to insults and death threats, and will report on those visits, too. All this, and more, will be available in the book Hirshey hopes to publish in fall 2003.