Hank Messick

Razzle Dazzle Hank Messick

In Sin City, Newport, Kentucky, in the mid-twenthieth century, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, organized crime--the syndicate--established itself as the purveyor of vice: gambling & prostituion. Since the prohibtion era Newport had been the night life center for the greater Cincinnati area, and by the 1950s it was run by the eastern mafia syndicate based in Cleveland. In the late 1950s Newport citizens began their attempt to clean up Newport to make way for future economic and social development. Into this battle between vice and reform, stepped Hank Messick, an investigative journalist for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Over the next few years, Messick reported in one sensational story after another, the inner workings of the syndicate and its ultimate downfall. Razzle Dazzle is his personal account of those tumultuous and dangerous years.