Early Adventures of Don Everhard

This is where it all began. Before Sam Spade, before the Continental Op, before Race Williams, there was Don Everhard - a professional gambler, card sharp, and conman who operates in the shadowed saloons and train cars of early 20th-century America. Quick with a deck of cards and even quicker with a revolver, he's a man who survives by his wits and his willingness to outsmart everyone around him. These three stories trace his early years, showing how he earned his reputation as a jack-of-all-trades who could talk his way out of any trap or into any man's pocket. Gordon Young's prose is stripped down and brutal, full of snappy dialogue and sudden violence - a preview of the hard-boiled style that would later define American crime fiction. This is pulp fiction at its rawest: fast, amoral, and completely unconcerned with redemption.