The Mancos Public Library will host author Chuck Greaves for a discussion of his latest novel, “Tom & Lucky And George & Cokey Flo” on Thursday, June 9 at 7 p.m.
This legal thriller is based on the events of 1936 and the trial of mobster Lucky Luciano. Greaves will offer a reading from the novel and recount his experience examining the documents of defense attorney George Morton Levy.
The Wall Street Journal selected the book as a Best Books of 2015. The book also is one of three finalists for the 2016 the Harper Lee Prize, awarded annually to the best book of legal fiction.
In the book, the year is 1936, and Luciano is the most powerful gangster in America. Thomas E. Dewey is an ambitious prosecutor determined to bring him down, and Cokey Flo Brown – grifter and heroin addict – is the witness who claims she can do it. Only a canny Long Island defense attorney named George Morton Levy stands between Lucky and a life behind bars, between Dewey and the New York governor’s mansion.
Dewey would nearly become president of the United States, and would ultimately lead one of the world’s largest law firms. Levy would found Roosevelt Raceway in 1940, only to briefly return to the national spotlight as the first witness called before the U.S. Senate’s 1951 Kefauver Committee hearings in New York, famously depicted in “The Godfather, Part II.” Luciano would serve 10 years in Dannemora prison before winning a pardon from then-Gov.Dewey for his role in assisting the U.S. war effort in Europe. Deported to Italy, he would briefly reside in Havana, Cuba, from which he – along with boyhood chums Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky – would finance construction of the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas. Cokey Flo Brown would move to California, would see herself portrayed on screen by Bette Davis, and disappear into obscurity and addiction in the brothels of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
For four short weeks in 1936, these four lives would enthrall the nation.
Charles Joseph Greaves was born and raised in Levittown, New York. He is an honors graduate of both the University of Southern California and Boston College Law School who spent 25 years as a trial lawyer in Los Angeles before moving to Santa Fe in 2006 to pursue a writing career.
His debut novel “Hush Money” (Minotaur), the first installment in the Jack MacTaggart series of legal mysteries, won the SouthWest Writers’ International Writing Contest and was named a finalist for national honors including the Rocky Award, the Shamus Award, the Reviewers’ Choice Award, and the Audie Award for Best Mystery Audiobook of 2012. His second novel, “Hard Twisted” (Bloomsbury), based on a Depression-era true crime, was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in Fiction. His third MacTaggart novel, “The Last Heir,” was a finalist for the 2015 Colorado Book Award for Best Mystery.
Chuck is the book critic for the Four Corners Free Press in southwestern Colorado, where he currently lives.
For more information, visit www.mancoslibrary.org or call 533-7600.
