Men Against Crime #5

On a movie set in 1940s Hollywood, a washed-up bit player named Marty Franz—once a star of gangster pictures—turns a film robbery scene into the real thing, holding the cast and crew at gunpoint and making off with a director's wife's collection of jewels worth a fortune. Lieutenant Carnithan of the homicide bureau must piece together how a man consumed by bitterness over his fall from stardom became a genuine criminal, blurring the line between the roles he used to play and the crimes he's now committing. As Franz holes up with his gang in a mountain hideaway, the detective works to track down a man who's learned his craft all too well from years in front of the camera.

Rick Slade runs a criminal enterprise disguised as a legitimate stock brokerage, using coded listings to connect desperate criminals with jobs and taking a cut of every score. When one of his operatives is caught and talks to the police, Rick must decide whether to flee or risk everything to protect his ingenious racket from the law closing in.

When Sgt. McLean fishes a young corpse from the harbor, it marks the end of "Sailor" Mango's reign as a river pirate—but the story of how an ambitious waterfront kid became the most ruthless criminal on the city's waterways is far more instructive. From petty theft at ocean liners to commanding an armored gang that raids warehouses with machine guns and explosives, Mango's climb through crime is as swift and brutal as his downfall, told here with all the grit and morality of 1951's hardest crime tales.