From the early days of piracy to twentieth-century mob massacres, the state has been plagued with some of the worst crimes in history. This book begins with a general overview of crime in the state and then focuses on its headline stories.

America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman - the flapper...

Frank The Enforcer Nitti is arguably the most glamorized gangster in history. He was an infamous Chicago wise guy, who eventually rose to command the city's premier underworld organization-The Outfit. Though he has been widely mentioned in fictional works, this is the first book to document Nitti's real-life criminal career alongside his pop culture persona, with special chapters devoted to the many television shows, movies, and songs featuring Nitti....

Chicago and its history are defined by such notorious crime figures as Al Capone and John Dillinger. Gangland Chicago vividly recounts the evolution of street gangs in Chicago before Capone and Dillinger, and the rise of organized crime that earned the Windy City a reputation for unchecked violence, lawlessness, and mayhem.

"Former Chicago police officer and mafia associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, the protagonist of Nicholas Pileggi's Casino and one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt. While Spilotro became the youngest made man in...

Painting a vivid picture of the scenes both inside and outside the courtroom and re-creating events from court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes taken day after day as the story unfolded in court in 2007, this narrative accurately portrays cold-blooded—and sometimes incompetent—killers and their crimes. In 1998 Frank Calabrese Jr. offered to wear a wire to help the FBI build a case against his father, Frank Sr., and his uncle...

"Crime and gentrification represent hot button issues in racially-diverse neighborhoods. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork, Us Versus Them provides a detailed analysis of community conflict in Rogers Park and Uptown, two Chicago neighborhoods. The book shows how competing views about neighborhood change divided residents into two political camps, which prioritized either the fight against crime or the fight against gentrification....

"A THRILLING MAGNUM OPUS ON AMERICA'S GREAT CRIME EPIC. A Mystery Writers of America "Grand Master"--author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition, long-time Dick Tracy writer, and multiple Shamus Award winner--teams with an acclaimed rising young historian, in this riveting, myth-shattering dual portrait of Al Capone, America's most notorious gangster, and Eliot Ness, the legendary Prohibition agent whose extraordinary investigative work crippled...

In a city emerging from its pandemic lockdown, detective V.I. Warshawski must elude Chicago powerbrokers and mobsters as she tries to find a missing girl who is the key witness to a nefarious conspiracy, which makes Warshawski a target as well.