EMPIRE OF SIN is the vibrant account of New Orleans in the early 1920s: a remarkable story of the city s thirty-years civil war, which pitted the elite against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. At its center is Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact. Surrounding him are flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy. Packed with marvelous characters - like brothel madams Josie Arlington and Lulu White, jazz musician Buddy Bolden, and Italian mobster Joseph Monfre - and propelled by an axe-murder mystery, this cinematic history reads like an action-packed novel."