Finalist for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction 2016 Finalist for the Macavity Award 2016 The year is 1936 Charles 'Lucky' Luciano is the most powerful gangster in America, Mob overlord and bootlegger millionaire. Thomas E. Dewey is an ambitious young prosecutor determined to bring him down, and Cokey Flo Brown - grifter, heroin addict and sometime prostitute - is the witness who claims she can do it. Only a wily defence attorney named George Morton Levy stands between Lucky and a life behind bars, and between Dewey and the New York Governor's mansion. As the Roaring Twenties give way to the austere reality of the Great Depression, four lives, each on its own incandescent trajectory, intersect in a New York courtroom. The events of this seminal Mob trial will introduce America to the violent and darkly glamorous world of organised crime, and leave its culture, laws and politics for ever changed.
C. Joseph Greaves Books
Charles Joseph Greaves transitioned from a 25-year career as a Los Angeles trial lawyer to fiction writing. His debut historical/true-crime novel, Hard Twisted, was lauded as a taut thriller and a gritty read begging for a film adaptation. In his subsequent work, Tom & Lucky, he delved into the colorful and controversial vice trial of Lucky Luciano. His literary fiction, Church of the Graveyard Saints, explores the theme of returning home with both passion and compassion, offering readers a lyrical and vivid tour of the West. Under the pseudonym Chuck Greaves, he writes mystery fiction and serves as a regular book critic.
