The Ice Man by Philip Carlo | Spoiler Free

The true crime book we are talking to about today was recommended by Lesley Harris on Facebook, and I chose this one myself because it’s actually a book that I’ve had for a while that I wanted to read. That book is The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo. 

I am a huge fan of Philip Carlo. I really enjoyed some of his other works like The Night Stalker where he talked about Richard Ramirez. However, I have to say that while I enjoyed the content of this book, I also had some problems with it.   

This book gives a really deep insight in to the life of Richard Kuklinski, from birth to his life of mayhem and murder, and his eventual death.

Philip Carlo has this talent in storytelling. He is able to share both his personal commentary and interactions with the person he is writing about, in this case Kuklinski, while also sharing their true story. 

There are really rare pictures of Kuklinski and his wife included, which is interesting to see and breaks up the story a little. 

Here were the problems I had with this book; the increasingly repetitive statements and the monotonous beginning. 

There were so many parts of the text that resurface over and over and over again throughout the book, many of them word for word recollections of something that we’ve already read. It may have been done on purpose, but to me that just kind of felt like sloppy editing. 

The beginning and most of the middle were…slow. Very slow. And that may have been because of the constant repetitions like I mentioned before. 

One final thing I want to note is that Richard Kuklinski was a well known liar. He has made many claims that are not true, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he has exaggerated the exact number of people he’s killed as well as the methods in which he’s killed them. So this is another book to take with a grain of salt. 

Overall, this is a good book, but it’s one that once you read it you’d probably not ever want to read it again. 

So, that’s all I have today. Thank you again Lesley Harris for the true crime book recommendation. I would love to hear more of the true crime books that you think I should read, so make sure you leave your recommendation in the comments down below. I can’t wait to hear from you.