BUGSY The Godfather of Las Vegas

Paperback. 1st UK edn. By the time he was 21, Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel had committed rape, robbery and murder - and he'd hardly got started. He formed the first-ever gang of professional executioners for hire - the forerunner to Murder, Inc. Soon his success began to worry his Mafia bosses. He was too big for New York, they decided. So they sent him to California with his pockets full of Syndicate cash and the instruction: 'Take over Hollywood.' He was Movie City's newest blue-eye boy, living in palatial splendour on an estate in Beverly Hills, hobnobbing with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, and muscling in on every West Coast racket from drug to union corruption. His greatest achievement was transforming Las Vegas from a one-horse town in the Nevada desert into the glittering gambling capital of the world - glamorous, prosperous, and owned by the Mafia lock, stock and barrel. At the height of his power, he spent an evening at an expensive restaurant by the sea then returned to his latest girlfriend's flat - where a hired killer lay in wait. Illus. + Index. 190pp. p/back. Lightly browned pp., no creasing to covers, but as the result of poor storage, the book has a vertical 'curve' which prevents it from lying flat. Nr. Vg.