The Lawless Years

Detective Ruditsky relates the story of Nick Joseph, a small-time hood from Manhattan's Lower East Side, who rises from petty theft to become an ace contract killer for the syndicate's notorious Murder, Inc.

An immigrant woman tries to get Ruditsky to set her son on the straight and narrow. It seems as though he's been hanging around with a gang of hoodlums. Ruditsky gives it his best effort but it could be a tough sell.

Jane Cooper, recently paroled from prison, proves that she hasn't learned anything when she once again begins hanging around with underworld characters. Only this time it seems as though her mobster boyfriends keep dying off.

Cutie Jaffe, a small-time hood with big time ambitions, begins knocking over some of his brother-in-law's bootlegging trucks. Will Cutie rise in the underworld hierarchy or is he headed for a hard fall?

Dutch Schultz wants to bump off special prosecutor Thomas Dewey who has been after him. The syndicate bigwigs deny him permission to make the hit but the Dutchman proceeds with his plans anyway.

Small time racketeer Eddie Safronek plots revenge against the hoods who beat him up and left him for dead.

When a young hoodlum named Al Brown destroys a blind man's shop it puts Ruditsky on his trail. But it will be under another name in another city that Brown becomes notorious.

When the trail of a murdered garment factor owner leads back to the notorious Lepke Buchalter he sends the htman responsible, Big Greeny, to stay in Los Angeles under the auspices of the equally notorious Bugsy Siegal.

Ruditsky goes after Art Harris, a racketeer who's muscled his way into the political scene in order to protect his organized crime interests.

Mob boss Bobo Konig puts a bounty of $50,000 on psychotic gunman Billy Boy Creel who immediately goes underground. Ruditsky then tries to find Billy Boy before Konig's killers do.

Gangster Louis Otto was once a childhood friend of Ruditsky's. Now he's wanted for the murder of an underling.

A former union trucker who now owns a candy store is pressured by the Mob to leave New York City because he knows too much about their past labor racketeering activities. When he refuses to leave the city, the Mob bumps him off. The man's crippled son is the only witness to his father's killing.