The Devil Himself
Press
Historical Novel Society Review of 'The Devil Himself'
Historical Novel Society – April 2012
Book Review: 'The Devil Himself: A Novel'
The Washington Times – November 14, 2011
Books: Surviving, an Ancient Art
Hadassah Magazine – October 21, 2011
'Devil Himself' mixes history, fiction for darkly comic tale
Las Vegas Review-Journal – September 30, 2011
Operation Underworld
The American Spectator – September 14, 2011
Why the Kosher Nostra Faced Down the Nazis in World War II
B'Nai B'Rith Magazine – September 2011
(Click Fall 2011 Issue and go to page 28)
America’s Unsavory WWII Alliances Depicted in Dezenhall Book, “The Devil Inside”
OpenMarket.org – August 22, 2011
Jim Bohannon interviews Eric Dezenhall
The Jim Bohannon Show – August 9, 2011
(Click August 9 in the calendar. Interview begins at the 40:00 mark)
The 3-Minute Interview: Eric Dezenhall
The Washington Examiner – August 3, 2011
Novel Examines Navy’s Deal With the ‘Devil’
Roll Call – August 2, 2011
Beach Reading
Washington Times – August 1, 2011
NYC Mob Tour Review
NYC Mob Tour – August 1, 2011
La Cosa Nostra Meets Kosher Nostra
Brooklyn Daily Eagle – July 29, 2011
Prairie Miller’s Arts Express
WBAI Radio / New York, NY – July 29, 2011
Meyer Lansky: US government collaborator?
Examiner.com / New York, NY – July 21, 2011
David Stewart Interviews Eric Dezenhall
The Washington Independent Review of Books – July 20, 2011
Patriotic Mobsters
Washington Jewish Week – July 20, 2011
Kevin Riordan: Cherry Hill native tells tale of gangster who did good
Philadelphia Inquirer – July 19, 2011
The Real Inglorious Bastards
The Daily Beast – July 18, 2011
Bill Thompson Interviews Eric Dezenhall
Eye on Books – July 13, 2011
Acclaimed author returning to Cherry Hill to discuss ‘Devil Himself’
Jewish Community Voice – July 13, 2011
Reviews
With “the fate of civilization rested upon a handful of weary sailors and patriotic crooks,” Dezenhall intrigues with well-imagined, little-known history.
Dezenhall’s (Spinning Dixie, 2006, etc.) fifth novel takes a cast of characters from history – FDR, Walter Winchell, Meyer Lansky – sets the story during the bleak beginning of World War II, and adds a secret network of counter-spies who made their bones as gangsters.
Recurring narrator Jonah Eastman is the grandson of Mickey Price, an old man who earned a fortune rum-running during Prohibition and went semi-legit with an Atlantic City casino. Eastman is also a college intern in the Reagan White House. His boss there knows his family background and wants Jonah to interview “Uncle Meyer.” Meyer Lansky was the real-life shadowy genius behind much mid-century U.S. organized crime. The Reagan Administration has discovered that Lansky and his cohorts – the “Ferret Squad” – helped root out Nazi undercover agents during WWII. The politicians are unofficially interested in Lansky’s story because there might be something valuable to be learned to deal with Islamo-fascist terrorists threatening U.S. interests.
The novel shifts back and forth in time, presented as Eastman’s report-from-notes made as he interviewed Uncle Meyer in Miami, mortally ill with lung cancer. Alternate scenes follow Lansky in the 1940s. Along with the background of the uneasy alliance between the Italian and Jewish gangsters who dominated the criminal enterprises around New York City, there are interesting character snippets of infamous gangsters like Lucky Luciano (whose Sicilian ties aid in the Allied invasion of that island), and Albert Anastasia, a rogue homicidal maniac, and Bugsy Siegel, as deadly as Anastasia but prone to follow Lansky’s lead. The author also fictionalizes – dramatically narrates – the participation of real-life Lieutenant Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, chief administrator of “Operation Underworld,” a man ill-used as bureaucrats grist-milled history in service of politics.
"Meyer Lansky, dying in Florida in 1982, agrees to talk with Jonah Eastman, grandson of one of Lansky’s Mob associates back in the day. White House intern Eastman has been charged to get the real story from Lansky about the Mob’s participation in tracking Nazi spies during WWII. [This] opens the door to a fascinating account, based on fact, of the significant role Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and other mobsters played in ridding New York harbor of spies and preparing the soil for the invasion of Sicily. The novel works because of the richness of the historical material and the charismatic characterization of Lansky in wartime and four decades later as he awaits death. “Kvetching toward oblivion,” he tells his story to young Jonah from the cynical perspective of a man who has learned that governments are far less trustworthy than gangsters. Entertaining homefront espionage."