"A splendid portrait of an amazing character in an amazing era. The writing is tough and elegant, the research fresh and revealing. Billy Bathgate would have loved it." -Pete Hamill "A knowledgeable, tautly written book ... a minor classic of true crime reporting." -Los Angeles Times

On October 23, 1935, a rusty, steel-jacketed .45 slug tore through the body of Dutch Schultz. The Beer Baron of The Bronx and king of Harlem's numbers racket had finally gone too far. The result was the biggest gangland execution since the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. At the time, even the most knowledgeable news-hawks could only guess the reasons for the wholesale shooting. It remained for Paul Sann, one of New York City's best reporters, to reveal the entire truth. Only Sann had the connections, the knowledge of his hometown, and the tenacity to pursue this strange, blood-flecked story that led from the Lower East Side and the sidewalks of The Bronx to lavish Park Avenue penthouses, Broadway night spots, and ultimately to City Hall. Here Sann reveals the Dutchman's rise through the ranks, with Prohibition as his escalator; the Gotham

bloodbath war with Mad Dog Vincent Coll; how the Dutchman defied the underworld's Big Six; what the poetic jumble of Schultz's deathbed swan song meant (his Finnegan's Wake-like statement is reproduced here in full); Thomas E. Dewey's revelations about the long-whispered Dutch Schultz murder plot; the secret angry phone calls from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and J. Edgar Hoover. Here is all the drama of the driving '30s--the nightclub characters who played footsie with the underworld; the truces and alliances of politicians, police, unions, and racketeers; the National Crime Syndicate showing its claws for the first time--all played against the tumultuous background of the Depression and the New Deal. Kill the Dutchman! has the heart-pounding impact of a stop-the-presses crime story reported by a great newsman who loved his city, no matter what.