Description
"When I think about them other mugs, I suppose I got off lucky, luckier than Luciano, although I never went for a ride like him, although he never got it from the Hudson Dusters like I did. Lucky ran dames, I ran after 'em, which may be the basic difference between us, when you come to think of it. And right now, who would you rather be?"
-Owen Madden, from AND ALL THE SAINTS
HE BOUGHT BATHTUB GIN,
PRIZEFIGHTS, AND POLITICIANS.
The time is Prohibition. Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz rule the rackets. But they-and countless more-love or hate or fear one man: Owen Madden, the reigning Irish mob boss of the era.
Drawing on years of groundbreaking research and the powerful gifts of an acclaimed storyteller, Michael Walsh re-imagines the life and times of the man who transformed the raging gangs of New York into the towering syndicates of the twentieth century-and befriended Mae West, George Raft, Joe Louis, and others along the way. From Harlem's glittering Cotton Club to the blood-brushed alleys of Hell's Kitchen, AND ALL THE SAINTS animates an age of rum-runners and flinty dames, hot jazz and blazing guns...a time that belonged to "Owney" Madden, New York's toughest tough guy, like it belonged to nobody else.