Best 1929 Adventures (1)

By: Joshua Glenn
May 3, 2019

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1929 adventure novels. Happy 90th anniversary!

W.R. Burnett’s crime adventure Little Caesar.

Less a novel than a series of exciting, dialogue-driven vignettes, Little Caesar traces the rise and fall of Cesare “Rico” Bandello, as he assumes control of an organized crime racket on the north side of Chicago, commonly known as Little Italy. Rico is a talented, ambitious up-and-coming gangster frustrated by a rigidly stratified hierarchy that makes advancement difficult. He collaborates with Sam Vettori, one of the toughest gang-bosses of Little Italy, until a nightclub robbery goes awry (a police captain is killed), at which point all bets are off. The famous “meeting of the five families” scene in The Godfather is prefigured here: Once Rico becomes boss of his gang, he is invited to a summit in which the rackets are divided up. There’s really only one action scene in this short book, but it’s a good one. Considered the first American gangster novel, Little Caesar was innovative in its realistic, unromanticized depiction — it’s written in a concise, straightforward, adjective-free, newspaper-like style — of how a vicious criminal operation is actually managed.

Fun facts: Burnett had worked as a night clerk in a seedy Chicago hotel, where he picked up slang and underworld argot from prize fighters, hoodlums, and hustlers. Little Caesar was a popular success, as was the 1931 film adaptation starring a then-unknown Edward G. Robinson — the first of the classic American gangster movies. As a screenwriter, he went on to work on everything from Scarface (1932) to The Great Escape (1963), and wrote the novels that became High Sierra (1941) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), among other classic films.

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Best 1929 Adventures (1)

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