Graham Bell works for the mail service in England. He has degrees in politics, law and military history. He has been fascinated by the American Mafia for years. One of his sources is the grandson of a shooter for Al Capone. He has worked as a gold plater, civil servant and lock salesman (he sold a lock to a housewife who was babysitting for the woman who was caught with the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Suttcliffe). He is now working on a book about Robert the Bruce, a medieval Scottish king.

Beginning in the 1920s, an all-star team of goons, gunmen and garrotters transformed America's criminal landscape. Its membership was diverse; the mob recruited men from all ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Most were natives of the Big Apple, handpi