This past week, I slogged through a book that features a rather peculiar perspective. This novel tells a tale of two best friends from a rough Italian neighborhood in Chicago—one who grows up to be a private investigator for the mafia, the other who becomes an F.B.I. agent. The premise is promising, but what’s most remarkable is the author’s clear affection for the fictional gangsters, and even for mob justice. What kept me reading to the end was the identity of the author, Anthony Pellicano, and the publisher’s word that this was “his first work of not-so-fictional fiction.”

Pellicano, of course, is one of the most notorious figures in Hollywood history—a former private investigator who once helped half the town spy on the other. A-list clients like Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, Michael Ovitz, Brad Grey, Chris Rock, and on and on, used his services. Then, one day in 2002, a nosy Los Angeles Times reporter found a dead fish, a rose, and a “stop” sign on her car’s windshield. The F.B.I. began investigating Pellicano, and a whole world of secrets began spilling out into view.