Crime Must Pay the Penalty #13

During the depths of the Depression in 1932, a struggling mortician and his criminal associates devise a scheme to collect life insurance by killing a destitute old vagrant named John Duffy—but their "invincible victim" proves remarkably difficult to dispose of, surviving poison, contaminated food, exposure, and a hit-and-run with chilling ease. Desperate and baffled, the gang escalates their attempts in increasingly brutal fashion, leading them down a dark path where their own desperation may finally catch up with them. Based on an actual case from the Bronx, this grim tale captures the moral collapse that hunger and hard times can bring to ordinary men.

Ace Newton is a master of deception—a crack shot, magician, mind reader, and escape artist whose skills made him invaluable to the Sedley mob, but each trick he pulled to evade justice only deepened his criminal entanglement. As Newton's murders pile up and his disguises grow ever more elaborate, the law closes in, and even his greatest illusions may not be enough to vanish before the consequences catch up with him.

When rival criminals Scow Green and Weed Larsen reluctantly become partners in a smuggling operation along the New England coast, their deep-seated hatred for each other festers beneath every dirty deal—Scow, a sea-sick bootlegger who fears the water, and Larsen, a land-fearing pirate who despises solid ground. As each man plots against the other and their mutual paranoia grows, their fragile partnership hurtles toward a violent reckoning neither can control.

John Dreyer leads a double life as a seemingly ordinary butcher by day and a ruthless criminal by night, orchestrating murders and robberies with meticulous precision—his obsession with split-second timing the key to evading law enforcement. When his gambling debts mount and opportunity presents itself, Dreyer plots an audacious stockyard heist timed down to the minute, drawing in his alcoholic safecracker Wendler and other accomplices. As the pieces fall into place, Dreyer's elaborate scheme tests whether his fetish for punctuality will prove his salvation or his undoing.