The Dev­il Him­self is a well-researched recre­ation of the sto­ry behind the sto­ry of how the mob and the navy formed an uneasy alliance to under­mine Hitler’s U‑boat ter­ror­ism, told through the eyes of the actu­al mob­ster, Mey­er Lan­sky. The diminu­tive gang­ster spends his final days relat­ing how he helped destroy the Third Reich to Jon­ah East­man, a fel­low mobster’s grand­son. Lan­sky chron­i­cles the for­ma­tion of a pre­car­i­ous part­ner­ship with naval offi­cers and politi­cians. We fol­low Lan­sky as he can­ni­ly threads his way through a dan­ger­ous thick­et of intrigue and polit­i­cal back­stab­bing. Com­man­der Haf­fend­en, a naval intel­li­gence offi­cer, part­ners with Lan­sky and becomes the pawn of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy to keep that unholy pact a secret. With Lanskey at the helm they even­tu­al­ly achieve the goal of destroy­ing Hitler’s U‑boat fleet. At the end of his life, Lan­sky lives to regret that unlike Bronf­man, Kennedy, and Annen­berg— who also made their mil­lions through ille­gal means — he didn’t think it was impor­tant to spend a for­tune clean­ing up his name. And the hon­or­able Hafffend­en becomes the vic­tim of a cru­el game to bury the politi­cians’ secret agree­ment with gang­sters. The dia­logue, which in places reads like a stand up-com­e­dy rou­tine, adds a humor­ous touch. Rather than a fast-paced, action-packed thriller, read­ers will be enter­tained by fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the very real and risky psy­cho­log­i­cal game behind espi­onage and mafia justice.