Weir takes the reader back 60 years to the gangster heydays of Dallas and astounds him with the vivid images of the underworld and police workings only a former cop might know.
Tommy Crandon is the lead mobster of the time, while Harold Battle runs a gambling unit with a cut going toward Crandon. When Crandon demands a bigger piece of the pie, Battle has no choice but to stand his ground or look the fool in front of his own minions.
But Crandon can't stand the affront to his power-he owned the Dallas underworld and most of the police force-so he puts a price on Battle's head, and the novel becomes some freakish event after event of surviving an assassin's tool.
This is how Battle gets the nickname, Cat. There is, of course, the "incorruptible" cop, James Huntley, who joins with Battle in the struggle against Crandon.
Theme:
During the 1940s, the virgin territory of Dallas, Texas, was being set up as a prime target for invasion by Mafia bosses from New York and Chicago, including Lucky Luciano, the "capo di tutti capi."
Conspiring with a recognized leader of a petty gang of gamblers and hoods in Dallas, Luciano intended to move in with drugs, prostitution, gambling, union infiltration, and other rackets.
However, another Dallas gambler, Harold Battle, engaged in a continuing struggle to keep his city free from a Mob stranglehold. Together with an incorruptible police detective, Battle fought back against incredible odds to save his city and his life.
Available in paperback at Amazon.com
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