Hank Messick

Syndicate in the Sun Hank Messick

Fresh off his success revealing the pernicious Syndicate operations in Newport, Kentucky, detailed in his book Syndicate Wife and later Razzle Dazzle, Hank Messick came to the Miami Herald in 1963 to write about organized crime in south Florida. Syndicate in the Sun is the inside story of vice and corruption on the Gold Coast, of Miami gone wild, told by a no-holds-barred journalist. It is a story of corrupt politicians in the 1960s, perhaps rivaled only by the law enforcement leadership they put in place. This is the Dade County you've never seen and never want to see. While headlines and front page photos showed gambling houses being taken down, Dade County's finest were allegedly raking in the profits from those houses under their protection. Exposing both the Mob and its partnerships with law enforcement put Messick in grave danger. That he managed to survive is a story in itself.