And All the Saints by Michael Walsh
No crime figure of our time influenced the course of modern American culture the way Owen Madden did. Starting as the leader of the Gophers, the most violent Irish street gang in Hell's Kitchen, the immigrant Madden rose to prominence as the leading brewer and bootlegger in Prohibition New York. In due course, he also became Mae West's lover, the founder and proprietor of the Cotton Club, the owner of five heavyweight champions of the world, the man who gave his childhood friend George Raft his big break in Hollywood and more. Now, Michael Walsh has created a fictionalised memoir that uses Madden's voice to trace his life from his boyhood in England to his heyday in New York and beyond in one of the most colourful and engrossing books of the season.