If the occasional blurb on Baristanet about shootings and robberies just whets your appetite for reading about local crime, you're in luck. There are two -- that's right -- two new tell-all memoirs out by former Montclair cops. First there's "Street Kid to Top Cop" by former police chief Thomas Russo, just out and available either online or at Watchung Booksellers. Then there's "You'll Never Believe It," by Anthony Naturale, who joined the Montclair police squad in 1957, which is available at Barnes and Noble.

Phil Read wrote about Russo's book last week in a Star Ledger story that didn't make it online.

To be sure, Russo is meticulous, citing newspaper articles as he lays out dozens of cases. Among them: the Montclair postal massacre of 1995, to which a whole chapter is devoted; the grandmother who took provocative pictures of her young grandchildren, and whose defense sparked a debate over the fine line between art and pornography; and the murder-suicide of a mother and her three daughters, students at Northeast School, to name just a few.

And of course, the lighter side.

[Russo's] book not unlike Naturales, has a homespun, self-published flavor. There are pictures of his bride and then, years later, him dancing with his bridal-gown-wearing daughters. There's the police "baseball card" of himself as chief. There's him, again, entertaining trick-or-treaters at police headquarters and a shot of him at a shooting, not the result of a holdup, but the result of "The Sopranos" film crew.

And then there's the time Naturale was holding four holdup suspects at gunpoint and his mom drove up and said... Well, we don't want to give it away.

September 28, 2005 in A Friend Writes | Permalink