Notorious Hoodlum is the story of the author’s posthumous search for the truth of his father’s life. When ‘Doc’ Dolan was murdered at his home by unidentified assailants in December, 1984, the author was drawn into a painful but irresistible investigation into his father’s criminal life among individuals like Jack Ruby, mobsters Santos Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and Benny Binion. Dolan Sr.’s provocative associations with these men and others puts him in the web of many Assassination theories claiming organized crime as the true culprits.
Not a simple true crime tale, the beating heart of the story is how the murder wrenched Dolan out of his deepening connection with his father after the older man’s release from prison. Painful grief and the shock of murder lead the author through his own sojourn in PTSD, and on into a deep investigation of how the sins of the father play out in his life as a psychotherapist. Readers might be reminded of McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes or perhaps This Boy’s Life by Andrew Tobias.
Jim Dolan is a Dallas psychotherapist and writer.
Doc Dolan was connected to the JFK assassination and some of Benny Binion’s bloodier work. When I was a kid, he pulled a con on me that I’m still struggling to understand.
— Author Jim Dolan
