Married to the Iceman: A True Account of Life with a Mafia Hitman and the Inside Story of His Crimes

New Jerseyite Richard Kuklinski had several different personalities: loving, indulgent husband and father, raging monster who abused his wife and three children, and icy-hearted hit man who killed between 22 and 100 people. The subtitle is misleading; he was a freelancer who only occasionally did jobs for the Mafia. His wife, from a close-knit Italian-American family, endured 25 years of marital horror, which she describes in chapters alternating with those by her husband, in which his crimes are detailed. The account is assisted by playwright and screenwriter Driver, who interviewed Richard for 30 hours. Readers will wonder how this wife could have had no notion, as she claims, of what her husband was up to until he was sentenced to life in 1988. And only the most dispassionate will be able to plow through so many unrestrained passages dramatizing the terrors of this family's home life. Author tour. (Nov.)