A stone for Danny Fisher - Harold Robbins

Few novelists knew the seamy side of New York as well as Harold Robbins - the terror in the streets, the ways to make shady money by playing along with the gamblers and mobsters, the unbridled lusts and passions of slum life. A Stone for Danny Fisher is the story of a young man who did not start at the bottom. Born into a family of modest means and respectability, Danny Fisher was gradually driven downward into the world of crime, racketeering and poverty. His bitterness, his homesickness over the loss of the house in Brooklyn that was given to him for his eighth birthday, and his feud with his harsli father, pulled him one way; his natural decency and his love for a sweet Italian girl, Nellie Petito, pulled him another. Danny was a boxer - a sensational amateur and potential champion - and he might have gone straight had the fight promoters not tried to exert pressure. He could not escape the gangsters, and later he became deeply involved in the black market and then in slot-machine rackets. Nevertheless, the driving force behind Danny's actions was always his sustaining love for Nellie.;In a story that is harsh yet tender, realistic and yet compassionate, Harold Robbins reveals what makes the Danny Fishers what they are.