Maurice Coons, writing under the pseudonym Armitage Trail, gathered the elements for 'Scarface' when living in Chicago, where he became acquainted with many local Sicilian gangs. He prowled the murky streets of Chicago's gangland with a friend every night for two years, returning home to put to paper and write a book which somewhat documented his experiences. The resulted novel was 'Scarface', and it was worth the effort. Not just a thinly disguised biography of Al Capone, 'Scarface' is a gangster tale surprisingly rich with character and atmosphere. The story moves at a cracking pace, and from the machine guns, brutal deaths and beautiful gals emerges the tragic tale of one man's downfall from his ruthless ambition and love for friend and family. The source for the 1932 Howard Hawks picture, as well as the Brian de Palma remake.
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Review:
'Ambition, greed and murder, all amid a whirlwind of cocaine' The Times
About the Author:
Armitage Trail was the pseudonym for the American author Maurice Coons, the son of a theatrical impresario who managed the road tours of the New Orleans Opera Company. He left school at sixteen and started selling stories to magazines. Maurice Coons gathered the elements for Scarface when living in Chicago, where he became acquainted with many local Sicilian gangs. For a couple of years, Coons spent his nights prowling Chicago's gangland with his friend, a lawyer, and spent his days sitting in the sun room of his apartment writing Scarface. Armitage Trail's only other surviving novel is The Thirteenth Guest which, together with Scarface, prefigure the birth of hardboiled fiction. Maurice Coons died of a heart attack when he was twenty-eight.
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- Publisherblackmask.com
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 1596542128
- ISBN 13 9781596542129
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages140
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Rating