Crime Does Not Pay #44

Mr. Crime recounts the ruthless rise of "Legs" Diamond, a career criminal who somehow survives bullets and murder charges while clawing his way up through the underworld—from small-time chiseler to bodyguard for mobster Little Augie, labor racketeer, and eventually nightclub owner. As Diamond's ambitions grow and his methods become increasingly brutal, the law closes in, but whether his charmed life will finally run out remains to be seen.

In 1870s Dresden, the seemingly jovial businessman Alexander Thomas conceals a sinister plot behind his respectable facade—he engineers mechanical devices of destruction hidden in shipping boxes and insures them for just under the investigation threshold, then collects when ships mysteriously vanish at sea. As his gruesome scheme claims hundreds of lives across multiple vessels, fate intervenes in the form of his own deadly creation, forcing an investigation that exposes the full horrifying extent of his crimes.

When a young heir to a fortune is found dead on the railroad tracks with a nasty wound on his head, Special Investigator Jones must untangle the mystery of how Ronald Bradley ended up there—especially when there's no ticket in his pocket and no sign of struggle aboard any of the trains that passed through that night. As Jones interviews Bradley's family members who stand to gain from his death, a hunch sends him scrambling back to the station to examine the train cars themselves, leading him to a shocking discovery that exposes the killer hiding in plain sight.