Crime Does Not Pay #114

Mike Castle, editor of the Centertown Ledger, has made a dangerous enemy in gang boss Laird Stokes with his hard-hitting editorial calling for Stokes's arrest. When Stokes discovers that Castle's wife Elaine once dated him years ago, he sees an opening—and dangles a deadly ultimatum: either Castle backs off, or his wife becomes a widow. Now Elaine must navigate between her husband's crusade for justice and the ruthless mobster determined to silence him, caught in a moral trap with no clean escape.

A daring gang of hijackers sets their sights on a crowded New York Harbor ferry in the summer of 1943, planning one of the most audacious piracies the coastal waters have seen. When the Harbor Patrol spots the stolen vessel and closes in, a desperate chase erupts across the fog-shrouded waters. The thieves discover that pulling off the perfect crime is far harder when the authorities are willing to fight back.

When childish pranks escalate into serious crime, two brothers—Bill and Carl—build a thriving shoplifting racket in New Orleans, believing a woman named Rusty Lane is their good-luck charm. But as rivalry with competing gangs intensifies and personal jealousy threatens to tear the operation apart, the brothers discover that their rise in the underworld may come crashing down faster than they built it.

Joe Blatz starts out as a hardened young criminal with jealousy and hatred burning in his heart, moving from petty theft through reformatory into armed robbery and worse. But his violent nature and inability to trust anyone—especially those closest to him—sets him on a collision course that even his cunning can't escape. By the time he's released from prison, the web of betrayal and revenge he's woven comes back to consume him in the most final way.