Böcker av Hank Messick

From Prohibition rum-running on the Great Lakes to casino-style gambling in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky, and finally to shimmering Las Vegas, the Cleveland Syndicate evolved from an outright criminal organization into a "respectable" enterprise. In this first volume of his Syndicate books, Hank Messick details the origins and rise of organized crime in America, with particular emphasis on the Cleveland Four: Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Louis Rothkopf, and Samuel Tucker. Along the way he introduces readers to Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, "Trigger" Mike Coppola, and other notable gangsters, lawmen, financiers, and murderers.

In another installment in his series on the organized crime Syndicate run by Meyer Lansky, investigative reporter Hank Messick details how the group moved its operations into the Bahamas following the Cuban Revolution. Relying more on moxie than muscle, and the bribe than violence, the Syndicate worked itself into Bahamian banks, board rooms, and the halls of political power. Ultimately, Lansky and his boys helped establish modern casino gambling in the Bahamas, which funneled American tourist cash into Syndicate coffers.

Fresh off his success revealing the pernicious Syndicate operations in Newport, Kentucky, detailed in his book Syndicate Wife and later Razzle Dazzle, Hank Messick came to the Miami Herald in 1963 to write about organized crime in south Florida. Syndicate in the Sun is the inside story of vice and corruption on the Gold Coast, of Miami gone wild, told by a no-holds-barred journalist. It is a story of corrupt politicians in the 1960s, perhaps rivaled only by the law enforcement leadership they put in place. This is the Dade County you've never seen and never want to see. While headlines and front page photos showed gambling houses being taken down, Dade County's finest were allegedly raking in the profits from those houses under their protection. Exposing both the Mob and its partnerships with law enforcement put Messick in grave danger. That he managed to survive is a story in itself.