April 1920. The Prohibition era has just begun, and the Wild West is a fading memory. Legendary lawman Wyatt Earp is spending his golden years in Los Angeles as a private detective—and sometime consultant on cowboy movies. Bored and restless, he jumps at the chance to go east to help the son of his late friend Doc Holliday. The young man's mother fears her gambler son will lose everything, including his life, in wild and woolly Manhattan, where Johnny Holliday has opened one of the first, and glitziest, speakeasy nightclubs.

Wyatt's onetime deputy, Bat Masterson, joins the defense of young Holliday against a new breed of badmen—mobsters led by Brooklyn's brash, brutal Alphonse Capone. Young Al and his sadistic boss Frankie Yale have targeted Holliday's nightspot, where jazz-baby diva Texas Guinan is welcoming suckers and money is flowing like bootleg beer. . . .

As the Twenties (and machine guns) start to roar, the lawless lawmen move through a glittering world of beautiful showgirls, ruthless gangsters, and high-rolling gamblers—taking one last glorious stand that makes the O.K. Corral shoot-out pale, signaling the end of their legend and the beginning of Scarface Al's.

Black Hats is a thrilling and colorful ride into a time and place where good guys and bad guys blur, and big-city dreams turn on a dime. In vivid detail, the enigmatic Earp's character draws into sharp focus, while Capone's young personality comes alive, foreshadowing the master criminal he would become. Wearing another hat, Patrick Culhane is one of suspense fiction's most respected writers, and his newest, most innovative blockbuster is grand, enormous fun.