Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs

The adventures of Billy Byrne, thug and gunman, in the underworld of Chicago and San Francisco, and on his mysterious cruise to the unexplored islands of the Pacific, make a yarn as strange and as vivid as even the famous Tarzan tales. A woman-"one o' them high-brow skirts"-taught Billy the real meaning of the word "coward". And the most astonishing thing in the book is the development of character of these two whom fate threw together in the strangest of circumstances. Billy Byrne is a low class American born in Chicago's ghetto. He grows up a thief and a mugger. "Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough." He is not chivalrous nor kind, and has only meager ethics - never giving evidence against a friend or leaving someone behind. He chooses a life of robbery and violence, disrespecting those who work for a living. He has a deep hatred for wealthy society.