Hardboiled crime novel

Nicholas Litchfield in the Lancashire Post: Reprinted from the late 1950s comes a tautly plotted, gritty tale of gang wars, racketeering, police corruption, and the dangers faced by a murder witness who risks his life to give testimony against powerful mobsters. Late American author Ovid E. Desmarais, better known as Ovid Demaris, was a journalist and bestselling author of thirty books. Praised for his investigative reporting on organized crime, political and business corruption, gambling and the underworld, several of his nonfiction books enjoyed a combined 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and have been translated and published in twenty-two countries.