Crime Must Pay the Penalty #43

Shakes Pruett is a small-time crook with a talent for imaginary ailments—every bump and bruise convinces him he's at death's door—but his real affliction is a trigger finger that leaves actual bodies in its wake. When a botched robbery and a murdered doctor put the police on his trail, Shakes's hypochondriac schemes and his gang's desperation collide in ways neither expected. As the net tightens and Shakes keeps insisting he's dying, the story spirals toward an ironic reckoning that only crime fiction can deliver.

When smarter-than-thou Joe Hammer and his slow-witted brother Louis rob their way through 1924 New York, Joe's constant cruelty and mockery plant the seeds for a tragedy that will destroy them both. As the brothers ride high on their crime spree, Joe's relentless belittling of Louis finally pushes the younger man past his breaking point—setting off a chain of desperate, violent acts that neither can escape. This is a raw look at how contempt and desperation collide in the underworld, where brute strength meets cunning and nobody wins.

When a heavyset gang leader named Lard Nichols lands in prison with a fortune in stolen payroll money hidden outside, he offers his former accomplices a cut of the loot if they'll engineer his escape—not over the wall, but under it, tunneling from a nearby farm. Mousey and the boys acquire the property through murder and begin their desperate dig, racing against time and the prison's unpredictable transfers. But Lard's hunger for that buried gold may have blinded them all to what's really waiting at the end of the tunnel.

Frisco Floyd Olivet claws his way from small-time street punk to San Francisco's ruthless crime boss, ruling the underworld through intimidation and violence in this 1955 crime tale. As his empire expands and his methods grow more brutal—from strong-arming shopkeepers to kidnapping for extortion—the very brutality that built his kingdom begins to unravel it. Watch as the gangster who swore he'd never get caught faces the inevitable day when the law and his own underworld close in on him.