Dust jacket by Gavin L. O'Keefe

THE CASE OF THE LAVENDER GRIPSACK

At last! After a thousand pages and more sidetrips through the backwoods of Chicago than you can imagine, the story of the man standing on the corner with the crimson hatbox is completed. Finally we find out why the defendant, when asked by the archbishop what was in the box, replied “Wah Lee’s skull. I cracked Vann’s pete.” But not without some of the most incredible courtroom hijinks in the history of jurisprudence. And it’s told as only Harry Stephen Keeler could tell it—in four long books.