White Devil: The True Story of the First White Asian Crime Boss

In this overtly sympathetic biography of a mob boss, broadcast journalist Halloran (Impact Statement) draws on court records, newspaper reportage, and his own interviews with key players to chronicle the rise in ranks of a white man in Boston’s Chinese mafia. John Willis is only a teenager when he first becomes involved with the Chinese mafia in the late 1980s, working as an enforcer who helps “encourage” people to pay their debts. Thanks to his passionate loyalty and capacity for violence, Willis gains more power in the organization, ultimately establishing himself as head of a drug-selling operation before the FBI finally brings him down in August 2013. Halloran focuses on the human aspect of Willis’s career, looking at how the deaths of his birth family early on made him willing and eager to serve the family he found in the Chinese organizations, where he was accepted despite standing out due to his race. Although readers see much of Willis’s violent, criminal nature and can understand how his self-destructive side led to his downfall, Halloran tempers this portrait with Willis’s love for his wife and daughter, loyalty to friends, and desire for simple human pleasures. The novelistic writing is highly accessible, though it sometimes lacks an easy flow; in an effort to convey as much information as possible, Halloran occasionally digresses from the main thread. Nevertheless, this is an eye-opening look at the inner workings of a larger-than-life criminal figure. Agent: Matthew Valentinas, Mom’s Basement Management. (Jan.)