It is run by an English-born gangster named Owney Maddox, who represents the New York syndicate and rules his empire like a Saxon lord while sporting an ascot and jodhpurs. But it is all about to be challenged. He begins a war on the gambling interests and, knowing the war will be long and bloody, hires an ex-Marine sergeant, Earl Swagger, who won the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima, to run it.
Swagger knows how to fight with guns as well as any man in the world.
And he's torn by his own impending fatherhood, as his wife, Junie nears term. The gangsters fight back, setting up a campaign of ambush and counter ambush in the brothels, casinos and alleys of the City of the Vapors. Raids erupt into full-out combat amid screaming prostitutes and fleeing johns. The body count mounts. Packed with page-turning action, sex, sin and crime, Stephen Hunter's Hot Springs is at once a relentlessly violent and deeply touching story.