The Heel

Up from the Chicago slums, schooled in sin and violence, Ray Hitchcock understood only three words-self-preservation, avarice and lust. He had a mind like a steel trap; ice-water in his veins; dynamite in his fists; cold stone where his heart should have been. To him, every woman was simply a female who had her price. Ray also had a scheme to swindle a million dollars, and he vowed that neither the cops nor the crime syndicate were going to push him against the rail! Then he began to get the dirty end of the deal. William Rohde, a master craftsman of the hard-boiled novel school blasts the lid off New York's newest and ugliest racket-a brutal, one-man extortion game in which loose-moneyed, loose-moraled men and women are easy prey for underworld leeches like The Heel, Ray Hitchock. He was a cruel, cunning mobster who played Romeo to an expensive, man-hungry blonde-long enough to get a crack at a million dollar jackpot. Smart as a whip, Hitchcock could have been successful as a straight-up businessman; unfortunately, his ego got in the way-causing him to always look for an angle and a quick and easy buck.