Crime Must Pay the Penalty #19

A brilliant young man's dream of becoming a surgeon is derailed when his violent temper costs him everything—and in prison, he discovers a darker path to success. Released into the criminal underworld, Lex Jordon uses his surgical skill not to save lives, but to transform wanted men's faces and serve the mob's most dangerous needs. "New Faces For Sale!" traces how ambition twisted by desperation can turn a gifted mind toward crime.

Milton Vaughan calls himself an artist—but his medium is the tommy-gun, and his talent for mayhem makes him valuable to mobsters from Atlanta to Detroit. When a botched rescue operation leaves his boss dead and the feds closing in, Vaughan flees across the country, only to find himself trapped working for a crime boss who sees him as more expendable than useful. As Vaughan tries to prove his worth through increasingly violent jobs, the line between being indispensable and marked for death grows dangerously thin.

In the rough dockside neighborhoods of Brooklyn during the Prohibition era, childhood friends Calvin Pratt, Mickey Brogan, and his sister Lois find their lives entangled in a violent underworld of racketeering and murder. When Calvin and Lois marry and Mickey joins the gang, the three become caught in a deadly spiral where rivals are eliminated and power is maintained through force—but in this world, nobody stays untouchable forever. "Marked For Death" traces how ambition, loyalty, and the cold logic of the streets lead these three down a path that none of them can escape.

When a man named Sanford Onslow joins Chicago crime boss Il Diavolo's operation in 1933, he doesn't realize he's signed up for a life where one mistake can be fatal—and when he forgets to change the license plates on a getaway car, Il Diavolo decides he's a liability. Inspector Norman pieces together the connection between a string of holdups and Onslow's involvement, but his investigation takes a darker turn when the terrified criminal chooses to surrender rather than face his ruthless employer. As Norman closes in on Il Diavolo's network, he must find a way to break the code of silence that protects the crime boss from prosecution.