“A tale that feels remarkably authentic…an ode to the ambition and cruelty of Owen Madden…the last of the great Irish American gangsters.”—HARTFORD COURANT

A life too big for facts gets the fiction it deserves.

No crime figure influenced the course of modern American culture the way Owen Madden did. Starting as the leader of the most violent Irish street gang in Hell’s Kitchen, the immigrant Madden rose to prominence as the leading brewer and bootlegger in Prohibition-era New York. In due course, he also became Mae West’s lover, the founder and proprietor of the Cotton Club, the owner of five heavyweight champions of the world, the man who gave his childhood friend George Raft his big break in Hollywood, and more. Michael Walsh has created a fictionalized memoir that uses Madden’s voice to trace his life from his boyhood in England to his heyday in New York and beyond.

Winner of the 2004 American Book Award for fiction.
Walsh, Michael