The Syndicate

Author/Guide: Guy Bolton

Why a Booktrail?

1947: You’ve left the dark side of Hollywood behind…but are you being followed?

ISBN: 978-1786074317
Genre: Crime, Hitman/Gangster, Thriller

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Jonathan Craine has left his old life in Hollywood behind him, content to live out his days with his son on a rural farm in California. But when infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel is murdered, Craine is forced to face his past once again.

Summoned to Las Vegas to meet mob head Meyer Lansky, Craine is given the impossible task of finder Siegel’s murderers. All he has to help him is an ageing hit man and a female crime reporter with her own agenda. And he knows that if he doesn’t succeed in five days, both he and his son will pay for it with their lives…

Locations

Reset

America/ USA - NV - Las Vegas
G: The Flamingo Casino

Travel Guide

Bugsy Siegel and Hollywood 1947

This is the kind of thing you want to see to discover the Hollywood of the 1940s:

It starts at the very house where the infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel lived. It’s now a tourist attraction and the very heart of this story. The gangster was murdered in his own home.

The Hollywood of this time was one of crooks, gangsters and mobsters but on the other hand was a simple time of when the movies and the great stars such as Lauren Bacall. Humphrey Bogart were still very much feted and revered. This was the golden age of Hollywood but there was darkness in the shadows.

This novel shows both sides very well indeed. From the gangster linked locations to the stunning art deco buildings.And the essence of the fear, the thrill, the glamour and the darkness go hand in hand. Craine thought he had left this behind, but he was wrong…

The Bradbury Building

The Bradbury Building is the oldest commercial building remaining in the central city and one of Los Angeles’ unique treasures. It’s also where the gangster dealings in the book take place.

Within, sits a magical light-filled Victorian court that rises almost fifty feet with open cage elevators, marble stairs, and ornate iron railings.

Bugsy Siegel

The real life Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas strip where a sign marks the spot…

“On this site, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel’s original flamingo hotel stood from December 26 1946 – December 14, 1993

The hotel,which housed 77 rooms, including the notorious Mr Sigel’s “Bugsy suite” or “presidential suite,” as it was sometimes referred to, was unique in more ways than one. The windowpanes, for instance, were bullet proof, and, although there was only one entrance to the top-floor suite, there were five possible exits. This included a hidden ladder leading from the hallway closet to a basement tunnel, which led to an underground garage, where Bugsy allegedly had a chauffeured getaway car awaiting at al times.

But Mr Siegel’s preoccupation with safety and escape routes proved to be geographically misplaced, on June 20, 1947, 300 miles from Las Vegas at the Beverley Hills Mansion of his girlfriend Virginia Hill. Bugsy was killed in a hail of Gunfire by unknown assailants.”

Trail Gallery

Booktrailer Review

Susan:@thebooktrailer

Having loved The Pictures, I was dying to read this so when I met the author a while ago, I practically wrestled him to the ground for a copy. He’s that nice, he made sure I got a lovely proof and even agreed to an interview for TheBooktrail so I mustn’t have wrestled too much!

Phew! Thank goodness for that as now I’ve read this, I REALLY want book three! It’s even more fascinating and captivating than the Pictures if that is possible. THIS is the dark side of Hollywood and it’s all based and inspired on true facts and the real Hollywood gangster life.

This is the most evocative read I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in a long while. I got to meet Bugsy Siegel – the real mob man of Hollywood although not for long as he’s killed in the early chapters. This is no spoiler as the whole book focuses on the search for his killer.

Ex-LAPD detective Jonathan Craine is now in a fixer for the Hollywood Film Studios, so basically tries to make all the sleaze fall of the accused and make the accusers go away. In the present post Weinstein and current MeToo movement, this seems particularly surreal and relevant.

Craine is drafted into find out who killed the most famous LA mobster of all time. And as you read and find out about Bugsy, his life and what he did….boy are you in for a read. It’s like a tour of Hollywood but although you start at one notorious home, the rest of the journey is around the shadows and dark corners of a very glitzy world. But scratch that surface and it oozes evil…

He has only five day to do it and he’s going to have a member of ‘the syndicate’ to accompany him…

IF this trail and chase is not nerve wracking enough – there is a lot at stake here not to mention the life of Craine and his son!! – but Guy manages to fix this even more in your conscience with the fact that he evokes the time and political atmosphere of the time by plenty of references or nudges to Hoover and his FBI investigating communism….paranoia and high stakes all round.

Oh I won’t say more – that’s for you to discover as blimey this is some discovery! Then it’s off to Vegas where we see where Siegel created The Flamingo – his iconic gambling mecca in Las Vegas

If THAT’s not enough – figures of Hollywood make various appearances throughout the book.

All in all it’s one heck of a literary yet cinematic reading experience.