How to Commit a Murder

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HOW TO COMMIT A MURDER "What sort of third degree do they give you for murder?" "Listen, mister," said Danny, and began. He told me how one went about covering one's tracks after committing a murder, then branched out into a description of the underworld and its professions. All unconsciously he gave me the underworld's point of view, which is his own-the underworld's code of ethics, its needs, and its safeguards against attack. He made me realize for the first time that there existed in our midst a people as foreign to our own society as any group of raw immigrants-a group that thought differently, lived differently, and reacted differently to social standards and customs. Prompted occasionally by a question he talked for four and a half solid hours-from two-thirty to seven-painting a picture of the underworld which was fascinating in its color and intimacy. "Will you put all that into a book?" I asked finally. "Sure I will. Anything you say. And not a thing I can't prove." And that is the way How to Commit a Murder was conceived.