Dylan Struzan at Fan Expo Dallas
As our coverage of this year’s Fan Expo Dallas continues, we bring you a necessary addition to the reading lists for all the bookworms out there. After two decades of work, author Dylan Struzan has finally released her debut true crime novel called A Bloody Business: The Rise of Organized Crime in America. The book details the rise of Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo & his contributions to the success of the American Mafia. For those of you who are familiar with the Italian Mafia or are at least fans of the Godfather trilogy, then you are already familiar with the part of organized crime that came to America from over seas. However, what you may not know is that, while the Italian Mob has dominated the attention of pop culture for many years, the rise of the American Mafia caused a massive upheaval in the business of crime by shifting it from a family business to a democratic enterprise that promoted the best & most industrious criminals. In fact, in many ways, Jimmy Alo & his companions in the early American Mafia were directly responsible for adding some civility to crime; a kind of honor among thieves, if you will.
Dylan began working on this story after having a chance encounter with Jimmy Alo himself. She was absolutely fascinated by his stories & hearing his side of the history of the American Mafia. As she continued talking to him & researching everything she could, she began establishing a more concrete timeline of events. With this, she was able to better put into context the history that she had been told & it’s implications on how organized crime evolved afterward. There was so much to learn that, even after 600 pages, this book is only part one of the story. Dylan still has a second novel that she’s working on to tell the rest of the fascinating history that she was given a first hand look into.
If you are a fan of true crime novels or the more modern part of American history, this book is exactly what you are looking for. You can find it on Amazon & in many of your local bookstores. Also, if you are interested in reading the story of how Dylan met the renowned gangster "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo, she has published an essay on Crime Reads detailing exactly that story. As always, links to both are listed bellow.
As an additional easter egg for the movie fans out there, if the book’s cover art looks very familiar, it’s because the cover & all illustrations inside the book were done by Dylan’s husband, Drew Struzan (the man responsible for just about every memorable movie poster since the 1970’s, including almost every movie made by Steven Spielberg & George Lucas)!