He appeared to be a decent, upright, honest citizen.... And yet appearances can be more than deceiving in the world of blackmail and extortion. The shocking gangland-style murder of known blackmailer Sy Kramer begs the question: which of Kramer's marks had given him his very last payoff? A politician's beautiful wife with a deadly secret? An overly interested ex-con? A wealthy soft-drinks executive? Or the mystery person who had fattened Kramer's wallet by the thousands? The detectives of the 87th Precinct must break the chain that links the dead man's associates and single out a killer -- before someone else cashes it in.

He appeared to be a decent, upright, honest citizen.... And yet appearances can be more than deceiving in the world of blackmail and extortion. The shocking gangland-style murder of known blackmailer Sy Kramer begs the question: which of Kramer's marks had given him his very last payoff? A politician's beautiful wife with a deadly secret? An overly interested ex-con? A wealthy soft-drinks executive? Or the mystery person who had fattened Kramer's wallet by the thousands? The detectives of the 87th Precinct must break the chain that links the dead man's associates and single out a killer -- before someone else cashes it in.

"One of the beat mysteries of the year." -- Providence Journal When an innocent young woman finds herself knee-deep in gambling -- and up to her beautiful neck in debts -- there's apt to be trouble.... And trouble is what Janey Blake had plenty of. She had written a pile of bad checks. And she was fighting to keep her husband from the arms of another woman.... But other people had trouble too. Doc Wemitz, for example. He was afraid of something. And apparently he had reason — for one night someone bashed in his skull.... That was the same night that Janey hit her first jackpot in months — and found a gilded coin that a desperate killer would stop at nothing to retrieve.

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a report on corruption in the city government. Authors JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy unearth the salacious details of Baker's crooked administration in a revelatory account of prohibition in the Rose City.

The Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated series continues to recount the criminal deeds of the bandits, bank robbers, serial killers, and gangsters of yesteryear while reprinting some of the most notorious pre-Code comics of all time! Our latest deluxe hardcover--including every uncensored page from Crime Does Not Pay issues #58 to #61--is packed with timeless true-crime tales by artists George Tuska, Jack Cole, Fred Guardineer, Dan Barry, Charles Biro, and others! This volume also features an enlightening new foreword by Eisner Award-winning writer Jeff Jensen (Green River Killer)! "Even in today's more jaded times, the guilt-free exuberance the creators poured into every bullet and blood spatter is infectious. This Crime pays, with hours of fun." -The Seattle Times

They’re hitmen. Trained assassins. If they nail this job, there’s a payoff. Possibly cookies. But first, the bad stuff. Dante’s done with hitman life, but there’s one last job to do. A favor to the Duke of Dovlano targeting brutal gun runners. Dante calls on comrades, Matteo—brilliant, brooding, lethal—and charming Sebastian “The Dentist” LaDouceur. Each has skills he’s honed to take out threats at all costs. They’ve also got soft spots for family, lost loves, baby farm animals, and iambic pentameter. But when the job falls apart, their carefully laid plans go up in smoke. Can three killers with a conscience stick together, or is it every man for himself?

In Pistols and Politics, Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., reveals the reasons behind the remarkable levels of violence in Louisiana’s Florida parishes in the nineteenth century. This updated and expanded edition deftly brings the analysis forward to account for the continuation of violence and mayhem in the region in the early twentieth century. Numerous pockets of small communities formed in the nineteenth-century South with cultures and values independent from those of the dominant planter class. As Hyde shows, one such area was the Florida parishes of southeastern Louisiana, where peculiar conditions com-bined to create an enclave of white yeomen, and where in the years after the Civil War, levels of conflict escalated to a state of chronic anar-chy. His careful study of a society that degenerated into utter chaos illuminates the factors that allowed these conditions to arise and triumph. Additional material reveals the ongoing impact of a culture riddled with suspicion and bitterness well into the Jim Crow era.