Book Review: Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra

I recently read the book Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. And here I am reviewing it. It was an amazing book, scary in some parts, good in all. If you're a Criminal Justice lover, then read this :D

Here is what the book is about

Michael Sullivan, Thomas Marcano, John Reilly and Lorenzo Carcaterra, who coincidentally wrote the book as well, are four friends growing up in Hell's Kitchen in New York in the 1960s. They are just like every other boy their age, 11 or 12, pulling harmless pranks on the people around them and each other. One day, a prank involving the stealing of a hot dog cart from a Greek vendor and pushing it down the open stairs to a subway entrance go wrong, injuring a 67 year old man named James Caldwell

And since the man sustains almost life threatening injuries, the four must go to court, where they are sentenced to a year in the Wilkinson Home for Boys, a juvenile home for boys. When they get there, they are automatically earmarked for abuse by the guards, Sean Nokes, Adam Styler, Ralph Ferguson and Henry Addison. Soon, these guys are abusing them physically on a daily basis, and even sexually abusing them and raping them daily. On the day that the main character, Lorenzo, is scheduled to leave, they find a rosary that his only Italian-speaking mother has sent him. They make him get down on his knees, saying they want to hear him pray. But before that, they yank his pants down roughly. Only when he starts to do that, Guard Addison takes his police baton and shoves inside him, sodomizing him with a police baton.

Later when they get out, John Reilly and Thomas Marcano end up as career criminals. Michael Sullivan turns out to be a district attorney. The main character ends up working as an editor for the entertainment section of the New York Daily News. When Thomas and John find one of the guards, Sean Nokes, sitting by himself at the Shamrock Pub, a local Irish bar, they shoot him dead, with a specific MO (modus operandi) or for you lovers of criminal justice, signature. They shoot him in the hands, hands he used to touch them inappropriately. When they go on trial for murder, Michael tries and successfully gets himself assigned to the case. He gets the case so he can have them walking away unscathed, literally getting away with murder