The book is set in a battered three-story New York City filled with gangs of "Swamp Angels", thugs like "dawn" or street hooligans, "dead rabbits" who went into battle, nailing their totem to the ends of sticks. Rat races, gambling dens, Chinese opium dens and their regulars, but the true hero of the underworld of this huge city was Edward Delaney - the founder of organized crime, the leader of a gang of 1200 people, the prince of gangsters, as his contemporaries called him.