When Frank Hobart, nationally known lawyer, millionaire, and Administration favorite, was shot down in the street, it was Captain Roy Hargis—the Hangman, the Administration's private gunman—who was called in to keep the public from discovering Hobart's connection with the out-of-town wire services and to find a sitting duck to take the rap. He thought that he had one when Joe Sert put the finger on Ilona Vance, but what happened next was only to prove how dangerous a beautiful woman can be even to a tough, ruthless, unscrupulous, and unemotional cop used to walking a highwire with no net beneath him. Here is another swift, tense, spellbinding story of big-city corruption by an author who knows his way around the dark byways of crime and the criminal mind and who knows how to tell a story of suspense and action and make it utterly convincing. (Original jacket copy, 1952)
Author
William Riley "W. R." Burnett was an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for the crime novel Little Caesar, the film adaptation of which is considered the first of the classic American gangster movies. Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio. He left his civil service job there to move to Chicago when he was 28, by which time he had written over 100 short stories and five novels, all unpublished. Burnett kept busy, producing a novel or more a year and turning most into screenplays (some as many as three times). Thematically Burnett was similar to Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain but his contrasting of the corruption and corrosion of the city with the better life his characters yearned for, represented by the paradise of the pastoral, was fresh and original. He portrayed characters who, for one reason or another, fell into a life of crime. Once sucked into this life they were unable to climb out. They typically get one last shot at salvation but the oppressive system closes in and denies redemption. Burnett's characters exist in a world of twilight morality—virtue can come from gangsters and criminals, malice from guardians and protectors. Above all his characters are human and this could be their undoing. Burnett worked with many of the greats in acting and directing, including Raoul Walsh, John Huston, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, Michael Cimino, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Paul Muni, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. He received an Oscar nomination for his script for "Wake Island" (1942) and a Writers Guild nomination for his script for "The Great Escape". In addition to his film work he also wrote scripts for television and radio. On his death in 1982, in Santa Monica, California,Burnett was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
