The Avenging Dervish in Runyonland

“If you read this chronicle, it proves that I manage to outwit and successfully wink the hood of some very shifty fish in Uncle Sam’s considerable tributary.” So begins the kept-under-the-Stetson saga of reporter Lovester Baxter. Baxter chronicles the adventures of The Avenging Dervish. As Baxter tells it, the Dervish is not some run-of-the-mill crusader in a cape. Brothers Barnabas and Dutch each possess a set of whammies that, when they work together, let them dish comeuppance aplenty. And despite being opposites personality-wise, Barnabas and Dutch must unite to fight as they are conjoined twins, fused back-to-back like a couple of cockeyed bookends. But when they spin their marvels — Hot Socks! — The Avenging Dervish runs circles around the Nogoodniks in that fabled borough just off old Broadway where guys and dolls kibitz amid craps, cards, coppers and cut-throats as a matter of course — Runyonland! "