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.
"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.
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