HOW TO COMMIT A MURDER

"What sort of third degree do they give you for murder?"

"Listen, mister," said Danny, and began. He told me how one went about covering one's tracks after committing a murder, then branched out into a description of the underworld and its professions. All unconsciously he gave me the underworld's point of view, which is his own-the underworld's code of ethics, its needs, and its safeguards against attack. He made me realize for the first time that there existed in our midst a people as foreign to our own society as any group of raw immigrants-a group that thought differently, lived differently, and reacted differently to social standards and customs. Prompted occasionally by a question he talked for four and a half solid hours-from two-thirty to seven-painting a picture of the underworld which was fascinating in its color and intimacy.

"Will you put all that into a book?" I asked finally.

"Sure I will. Anything you say. And not a thing I can't prove."

And that is the way How to Commit a Murder was conceived.