"The movie Bugsy was tough, funny, and sexy. As portrayed by Warren Beatty, Bugsy Siegel came across as the consummate charmer, except when he turned into a vicious, cold-blooded hoodlum and killer. Virginia Hill, played by Annette Bening, appeared as the romantic figure whose greatest love was Bugsy Siegel, the gangster who stormed Hollywood and created what we now know as the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas." "Now, in Bugsy's Baby we learned the truth about the tough-as-nails mob queen who became the most notorious and successful woman in the history of the Mafia. Virginia Hill was the only person ever to finesse the two great warring families, the Chicago gang of Al Capone and the New York mob of Frank Costello and Joe Adonis, and live to tell about it." "Born in 1916, the seventh of ten children of a poor Alabama horse and mule trader, Virginia became the recipient of her father's drunken attacks. One evening, her father came home with fire in his eyes and headed straight toward Virginia, who was then seven years old. Virginia grabbed the first thing she saw, an iron skillet still sizzling with grease, and whacked her father across his chest. As he reeled from the blow, Virginia taunted him and defied him to come near her. Her father vented his rage on his wife, but he never struck his daughter again." "Virginia Hill grew up to be a tall, willowy redhead who used sex to bend men to her will. In August 1933, at the age of seventeen, she arrived in Chicago and worked as a waitress in a mob-owned restaurant. She first caught the attention of Joe Epstein, who supervised the Chicago area gambling for the Capone gang. The rest is history." "Compulsively readable, Bugsy's Baby reveals: the actual story behind Hill's tempestuous love affair with Bugsy; Hill's roles with the mob: money launderer, fence for stolen property, and, most important, spy for the Chicago gangs against New York mobster Bugsy Siegel; what really happened during Hill's appearance as a key witness in the Kefauver televised investigation, which turned Virginia Hill into a national celebrity; the hit man and master mind behind Siegel's assassination and how Hill fit into the scheme. Narrowly escaping her own execution, she was saved by her former lover, mobster Joe Adonis and the reasons why Hill had to die, who ordered her death, and how it was done." "Andy Edmonds spent the past twelve years establishing personal contacts with members of the New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles mobs, many of whom broke their silence for her and this book. It was through these close, guarded contacts that Hill's secret diary - her own personal account of her work for the mob and the plot against Siegel - was discovered. The diary proves that Virginia Hill, a seemingly illiterate, wisecracking Southern waif, was one of the most calculating, treacherous, and manipulating women ever born." "Bugsy's Babe is based on first-hand interviews with underworld figures, law enforcement officials, and never-before-released government files, as well as Virginia's secret diary. It is a completely new picture of the inner workings of organized crime and the true story of the woman who bedded down with and schemed against some of the most notorious gangsters of all time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved