U. S. Gangster

LITTLE CAESAR--W. R. Burnett--Dial ($2).

The Story. Little Caesar is Rico, gangster, an able, hard-working author's serious attempt to put a contemporary U. S. type into U. S. literature.

No regular Italian, as he boasts, Rico was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He drank only milk. He gave diamonds for wear not to his women but to himself. Small and pale, he was a man bound to rise because he conducted his business with only his own future in constant view. He wanted some day to have wealth equal to that of the Big Boy, a Chicago politician who protected gangsters from the legal consequences of any crime but murder.

One New Year's eve while holding up a roadhouse, Rico found it necessary to kill a police officer. In the subsequent rise and fall of Rico in Chicago gangdom, this murder played the part of Fate in a Greek tragedy.

Rico's bold murder shattered Accomplice Tony's nerves. Tony, in his rosy-cheeked teens, had driven Rico and the two others from the scene in a big Cadillac. Then Tony, quondam choirboy, fled to a priest to confess it all. Hearing Tony was not a sturdy sinner, Rico gave chase, caught the boy going into the cathedral, silenced him forever with an automatic. Gangsters approved.

The leader of the gang was Sam Vettori. Fat and cunning, Sam owned the spaghetti joint over which the gang met. Rico's cop-murder alarmed Sam. Conservative, Sam protested: "Love of God, didn't I tell you no gunwork?" Rico retaliated by reducing Sam's share of the spoils. Sam acknowledged defeat graciously. Reason: the gang's best guns were behind ruthless Rico. So Rico rose to leadership of the gang.

When Rico was feted by the gang, Joe failed to appear. Joe was the svelte "inside man" of the roadhouse job. Now he had acquired a woman, money, a professional dancing job. He wanted to forget Rico, go straight. Rico believed that to go straight was to go soft, maybe to squawk. He invited Joe to join a second holdup. By refusing, Joe knew he would sign his own death-sentence. By accepting, he strengthened a valuable connection.

Rico's stock now sold at a new high in Gangland. Not satisfied to remain leader merely of the Vettori gang, he began seizing rival territory. Everything was daisy-- until one night a screaming woman recognized Joe on his dance floor as one of the principals in the roadhouse job. They arrested Joe. Without much third-degree, he turned State's evidence. Soon the "bulls" got Otero, Rico's faithful bodyguard, who stayed behind to shoot it out while Rico ran. And soon after that a detective got Rico in a corner. There was a long spurt of flame. Rico felt it in the chest. He fell. "Mother of God," he cried, a bit theatrically, "is this the end of Rico?"

The Significance. Author Burnett, impersonal, powerful, may prove to be the novelist which Ernest Hemingway once promised to be but is not yet. Little Caesar is masterly writing as well as great reporting. The story holds together toughly through many intricacies of men and motives. To answer people's questions as to why he considers it necessary or important to write authentically, seriously about U. S. gangsters, Author Burnett quotes shrewd Renaissance Reporter Macchiavelli : "You sow ripen." He hemlock, and thinks that expect to see "crime, the ears of corn Chicago brand at least ... is an indication of vitality" (TIME, June 17). As a creative writer, he is interested in all things vital, however irrelevant they may seem to the scheme of things orderly.

The Author. Aged 20 in 1920, William R. Burnett married a 20-year-old wife in Springfield, Ohio. Not rich, both worked. All his free time, all his nights and Sun days of the next seven years, Burnett spent at his desk. He wrote five novels, 50 short stories. None of them satisfied publishers or himself.

In 1927, the Burnetts went to Chicago. She got a job in an office. He worked briefly in the Marshall Field department store. Burnett seldom saw his wife those days. At night he loafed around with gangsters and pugilists. He was getting material for his sixth novel, Little Caesar, and his seventh, Iron Man, a soon-to-be-published prize-ring story. Almost 100,000 people have bought Little Caesar. So Author Burnett is no longer a part-time novelist. At his ease in Tombstone, Ariz., he is working full-time on an eighth novel, about a U. S. soldier in the Southwest in 1875.