The Heel (ePub)

Up from the Chicago slums, schooled in sin and violence, Ray Hitchcock understood only three words-self-preservation, avarice and lust. He had a mind like a steel trap; ice-water in his veins; dynamite in his fists; cold stone where his heart should have been. To him, every woman was simply a female who had her price. Ray also had a scheme to swindle a million dollars, and he vowed that neither the cops nor the crime syndicate were going to push him against the rail! Then he began to get the dirty end of the deal.William Rohde, a master craftsman of the hard-boiled novel school, blasts the lid off New York's newest and ugliest racket—a brutal, one-man extortion game in which loose-moneyed, loose-moraled men and women are easy prey for underworld leeches like The Heel, Ray Hitchock. He was a cruel, cunning mobster who played Romeo to an expensive, man-hungry blonde-long enough to get a crack at a million dollar jackpot. Smart as a whip, Hitchcock could have been successful as a straight-up businessman; unfortunately, his ego got in the way-causing him to always look for an angle and a quick and easy buck.About Vintage Paperback Pulp Fiction:A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and the reading public would consume them. In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. Unlike hardback books, these pulp paperbacks were available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them. The popular pulp genres reflected the tastes of Americans during the 1930s and 1940s—mysteries, thrillers, and "hardboiled detective" stories were all the rage.In the early 1950s new pulp fiction sub-genres emerged—science fiction, lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and sleaze, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Publishers had come to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they turned to alluring covers that often featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised sex and violence within. To this day, the pulp cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.We are excited to make these wonderful pulp fiction stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers, as a new revolution—the ebook revolution—is in full swing. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.