Crime Does Not Pay #37

Mr. Crime introduces his "pupil" Vincent Piazzero, a ruthless criminal who begins his career counterfeiting currency before graduating to bootlegging and running a sprawling network of illegal liquor stills across New Jersey. Over the course of a decade marked by prison time, violent revenge plots, and increasingly bold operations, Vincent stays one step ahead of law enforcement by keeping himself hidden behind layers of criminal underlings—though his arrogance and hair-trigger temper constantly threaten to undo him. This is the story of how ambition and cruelty shaped a mobster's rise through the criminal underworld.

George Adams works at an assay office in Seattle, handling gold dust—and he's convinced he's found the perfect way to steal from his employers without getting caught. When assay officials grow desperate over nearly $100,000 in missing gold, Adams's clever scheme begins to unravel, leading to a confrontation that proves crime rarely works out the way a crook imagines.

In Webster County, West Virginia, 1943, a hill-billy singer named Dana Dodrill finds himself drowning in debt—twenty dollars owed to a bar owner, over a hundred in taxes due. When a well-to-do traveler offers him a ride, Dana sees an opportunity, and his troubles seem solved by a brutal act of robbery and murder. As the sheriff pieces together clues from a song-request tag left at the scene, he zeros in on the taverns where Dana performs, setting a trap for a killer who commits his crimes while cheerfully singing along.