[1] This fictional story is set during The Great Depression and follows the career of Carl (Carlos) Webster, a crack shot, well respected, and mannerful lawman who killed his first criminal, aged 15.

The reader follows Carlos' career as he begins a long dance of death with Jack Belmont, an ambitious criminal who wants to become public enemy number one.

The story follows other characters like Louly Brown, a woman who loves Carlos, but wants to be known as Pretty Boy Floyd's gal.

The novel is full of grade-A action and violence perpetrated through criminals, lawmen, Tommy guns, bank robberies, hot cars, all falling against the backdrop of Prohibition.

Real life contemporary bank robbers who make an appearance in the novel include Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson Janet Maslin of The New York Times described the book as 'far from being an exercise in nostalgia, this book reinvigorates what Mr. Leonard might have experienced at his most impressionable: the mythmaking process that turned commonplace crooks into figures of folklore'[2] This article about a thriller novel of the 2000s is a stub.