Maurice Coons, writing under the pseudonym Armitage Trail, gathered the elements for 'Scarface' when living in Chicago, where he became acquainted with many local Sicilian gangs. He prowled the murky streets of Chicago's gangland with a friend every night for two years, returning home to put to paper and write a book which somewhat documented his experiences. The resulted novel was 'Scarface', and it was worth the effort. Not just a thinly disguised biography of Al Capone, 'Scarface' is a ...

Scarface follows Tony Guarino, who rises from low level gangster to top lieutenant to mob boss intent on dominating the illegal liquor trade in Chicago during 1920s Prohibition by any means necessary. Along the way he must avoid assassinations by rivals, crooked cops, corrupt district attorneys, a couple femme fatales, and his own brother who rises to lieutenant in the police department.

‘I’m Scarface. I’m just about ten times as hard-boiled as Johnny Lovo ever thought of being. I’ve bumped off six or eight myself and another one – especially a rat like you – wouldn’t mean a thing in my young life. Get me?’Scarface is the iconic fictionalization of one of history’s most notorious gangsters, Al Capone. It follows Tony Guarino’s harsh upbringing on the streets of Chicago, where a young man unwilling to contemplate a life of humble poverty hungers to...

100 Mystery Classics of World Literature maps the extraordinary breadth of mystery writing, from Gothic menace and sensation fiction to detective puzzles, espionage, psychological suspense, adventure, and tales of the uncanny. Its hundred selections place celebrated investigations beside narratives of crime, disguise, inheritance, urban danger, and moral ambiguity. The volume's range reveals mystery not as a narrow formula but as a capacious literary mode, encompassing the locked-room prob...

100 Masterpieces of Murder Mystery & Detective Fiction maps the extraordinary breadth of crime writing from Gothic terror and sensation fiction to the classical puzzle, espionage thriller, psychological suspense tale, and hard-edged urban narrative. Its hundred selections place locked rooms, poisoned inheritances, disappearances, criminal investigations, and uncanny intrusions in conversation with one another. The volume's range illuminates how murder mystery became a capacious literary fo...

The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the forthcoming film Marlowe, starring Liam NeesonIn The Simple Art of Murder, which was prefaced by the famous Atlantic Monthly essay of the same name, noir master Raymond Chandler argues the virtues of the hard-boiled detective novel, and this collec...

Feating Donald E. Westlake's hapless hero, John Dortmunder, this original compilation of short stories ties in to Westlake's latest Dortmunder hardcover, The Road to Ruin.It's all Dortmunder, all the time, in this long-awaited collection representing one of the finest achievements in crime fiction. Chosen from hundreds of stories and decades of work, this is the first time that Westlake has offered a compilation of his short form Dortmunder adventures, incl...

This "highly readable" memoir by a criminal awaiting execution on death row is "a sparkling contribution in the field of criminological thought" ( The New York Times ).In June 1948, 27-year-old petty criminal Caryl Chessman was sentenced in California on two counts of sexual assault, receiving two death sentences as punishment in a case that remains one of the most baffling episodes in American legal history.Mainta...

From the authors of the "excellent" Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries: NYC detective Nathan Shapiro must solve the case of a dead co-ed and an absent teacher ( The New Yorker).Nathan Shapiro might be the gloomiest member of Manhattan's finest, but that doesn't stop the dour detective from getting the job done when the going gets tough . . .Englishman Reginald Grant readily admits that the differences between British and American culture sometim...

Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis brings back the beguiling character Major General Ransom Jarvis in this third Mrs. Norris Mystery, a prequel, which immerses the redoubtable crime-solving Scottish housekeeper in a murder investigation in the nation's capitalWith a new president in the White House, Major General Ransom Jarvis suspects that his retirement from the US Army is imminent. But at Washington's annual invitation-only Beaux Arts Ball, the...

An kidnapped FBI agent must find his way back to London to bring down a terrorist plot in this satiric thriller.Tony Hawkin wasn't really made for the FBI. He rarely hit what he aimed at, forgot his own code name, and had a tendency to panic at the slightest hint of trouble. Now he's gotten himself handcuffed to an attache case with two million dollars inside, and stuffed aboard a hijacked DC-10, bound for Scotland, where he's being chased through the countryside b...

Written with wry humour, Prince of Omert� is a suspenseful and penetrating look into the violent culture and politics as well as the "ethics" of the underworld, told in a riveting and intriguing plot through the eyes of a hit man totally committed to omert� -- the code of silence.