The Circus of Satan

In 1878 a teenage Jew, the Hessex Kid, kills an Irish thug in a Five Point's bar fight in front of hundreds of drugged and drunken killers, all members of the Whyo Gang, which controls all crime in Manhattan under the aegis of the corrupt Irish politicians at Tammany Hall.

The boy is then grabbed by the rabble and murdered.

By 1900, the Irish mob has gained control of the police departments, the gangs, and crime in every major American city, and from 1900 to 1910, a political operative named James Monaghan has risen to the pinnacle of power at Tammany, which is the head of the nationwide snake.

In 1910, a gambler from Chicago named Billy McGuinness, haunted by the legend of the Hessex Kid, arrives in New York. He is connected to mid-west political powers and to gangsters Max and Moses Annenberg, Big Jim Colisimo, and Johnny Torrio, his sole objective: to destroy Monaghan and the Irish political and criminal machine,

And McGuinness begins his torturous maneuvers through real historic events and within the confines of New York's Bowery ghetto and its Tenderloin District, a.k.a Satan's Circus, manipulating the real politicians and gangsters who marked the period, now long-forgotten.

In the end, McGuinness becomes the inadvertent moving force behind prohibition booze smuggling, Murder Inc. and the Cosa Nostra until he is ultimately embraced by the hand of God.

Jeffrey Konvitz is an American attorney, writer, and film producer. He was raised in Woodmere, New York, and he graduated from Cornell University (AB) and Columbia Law School at Columbia University (JD). He is best known creatively for his 1974 New York Times best-selling novel, The Sentinel, which sold over 7,000,000 copies. He went on to adapt The Sentinel for the screen and produced the film for Universal Studios. Jeffrey is also the author of The Sentinel sequel novel, The Guardian, and the thriller, Monster: A Tale of Loch Ness. He lives in Los Angeles, where he writes, produces motion pictures, and engages in entertainment finance law, media litigation, and appellate work.