(from the book jacket)
Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops.  Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing.  Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.

But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one - neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover - can be trusted.  Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death.  But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt.

Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba.