Crime Detective Comics #4

During Prohibition's height in 1927, Big Steve Larson runs a smuggling operation between Canada and the United States, using fast boats to outrun federal patrols on the frozen rivers—but when his cut of the profits doesn't satisfy him, crime boss Hal Warner invites him to New York to smooth things over. What unfolds is a tense game of cat-and-mouse as Big Steve navigates the underworld's shifting loyalties while federal agents close in from all sides.

When dying bank robber Joe Felton makes his criminal partners Louie, Slug, and Benny Asley swear to care for his infant son Timmy, they reluctantly agree—but their promise sets off a chain of events that will test whether hardened crooks can truly change. As the three men struggle to keep the boy alive while staying one step ahead of the law, an unexpected solution arrives that might give young Timmy the life his father could never provide.

When a small-town bank becomes the easiest target in the region—hit six times in two months—Sheriff Russell Ames rallies the community to turn the tables on the criminals. He organizes an unlikely network of citizens with special talents: Painless Procter, a sharpshooter dentist; grocer Milt Haffner with his archery skills; Jack Smith, a boomerang expert at the local gas station; and judo master Jugger Benson. As the robbers strike again, this coordinated "gauntlet" of townspeople transforms Center City from a laughing stock into a criminal's worst nightmare.

Silk Langdon Moore is the classiest thief of the 1860s, and he's orchestrated an elegant heist of the Concord Bank in Boston with his aide Henry—no rough stuff, just careful planning and a key-maker's set to forge the six locks guarding the vault. The two work methodically over weeks to prepare, then execute their theft with Langdon's trademark style: a midday robbery while the bank is closed for lunch. But even the most meticulous criminal can't outrun the law forever.

When a Boston medical school janitor named Zep Lightfoot witnesses a wealthy creditor's mysterious disappearance in 1849, he begins to suspect his employer, Professor Clinton, might be hiding something—especially after the Professor's unusual generosity on Thanksgiving. With help from his wife Emmy, Zep pursues his own investigation into the case, convinced the answers lie hidden somewhere within the school's laboratory.

One of Europe's most notorious thieves, the Baron of Hamburg, devises an ingenious scheme to guide his criminal gang from beyond the grave—six carefully planned robberies, each detailed in sealed envelopes left for his trusted lieutenant Willi Schultz to execute one by one. As Willi carries out the Baron's instructions flawlessly, his confidence grows, and he begins to believe he's earned the right to lead on his own terms rather than follow a dead man's blueprint. When Willi decides to prove himself by planning an audacious job without the Baron's guidance, his hubris sets him on a collision course with consequences he never anticipated.