Corrupt Cops! Shootings On The Belt Parkway! Vowel-Ended Last Names! Where’s My Book Deal?

The Times reports that the upcoming trial of mafia-linked cops Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa has attracted a boatload of literary carpetbaggers:

Depending on whom you ask, when you ask them and how honest they are, there are four books and a movie, five books and a movie, four books but no movie or five books but no movie about the federal racketeering trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa in the works.

The trial, which began yesterday with jury selection in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, has become the latest scoop for the disheveled band of newspaper reporters who write about the courts and has led, in at least two cases, to a literary luncheon and a book deal. It has also served as a midcareer change of pace for two investigators on the case who have cashed in on their inside knowledge, signing book deals of their own.

Almost from the day last March when Mr. Eppolito, 57, and Mr. Caracappa, 64, two former New York police detectives, were slapped in handcuffs over dinner in Las Vegas, literary agents and Hollywood types have descended on the case. There were articles in Playboy and Vanity Fair, not to mention the city’s newspapers. At a pretrial hearing in September, Mr. Caracappa’s lawyer, Edward Hayes, mused aloud that every member of the prosecution team, except the two chief prosecutors, seemed to have a book deal.