Clive Cussler brings the past to extra-ordinary life through the trials of Detective Isaac Bell, a character who refuses to let corruption slip through the cracks in a nation moving from the Industrial to the Progressive Era. Now, in The Gangster, Cussler challenges his hero to seal up the fissures in his own life, by stopping a crime wave he may have put in motion. It is 1906, and Van Dorn private detective Bell has his hands full protecting the most vulnerable New Yorkers, immigrants with nowhere else to turn, from a vicious organization known as the Black Hand. Kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, sabotage - they take the oldest tricks and add dynamite. When a coalition of the Black Hand's victims hire out the Van Dorn Agency to protect their businesses, their reputations, and their families, Bell forms a crack squad and begins scouring the city for clues. Then the unexpected happens. He spots a familiar face. The stakes grow ever higher, with the Black Hand becoming more ambitious, and their targets more political. If Isaac Bell can't determine the role played by the face from his past, the next life lost could be that of one of the most powerful men in the nation. In The Gangster, furious action explodes across the evocative landscape of American history, as only Clive Cussler could envision it. -- Provided by dustjacket.