Road to Paradise

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Just when Nolan’s looking for a way out of his dead-end job, trouble comes knocking, and he’s back in business. Someone harboring an old grudge has just picked off Joey DiPreta. a crooked businessman with ties to the mob. and the guy’s family is out to get whoever’s responsible. So is Nolan’s Family — in Chicago — and they offer him big bucks and a piece of a swank hotel if he II protect their interests.

Only this time Nolan’s gotten into more than he bargained for. The hit man turns out to be a Vietnam vet convinced he’s launched a holy war against vice and corruption — and the son of one of Nolan’s friends. The melodramatic bastard’s got hard evidence of graft in high places, and he’s set himself up as some kind of avenging angel. His master plan calls for more hits, and there’s no telling when he’ll stop.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s pal Jon is courting disaster in a motel room, and a couple of innocents are kidnapped as a ploy to lure the hit man into the open. Somehow Nolan’s got to untangle the whole mess — and see that no one gets hurt. But with both sides out for blood, there’s no room for heroes, and he’ll have to be damned careful — and lucky — not to get nailed in the crossfire.

A legendary and retired police chief lies in a New York hospital bed, visited by two strangers: the first is ex-cop-turned-PI Mike Hammer, whose life was saved more than once by the old man. To the detective, the chief gives a mysterious key. The second visitor murders the chief, mere days before he would have died from natural causes. Someone is trying to tie up loose ends, and Mike Hammer is the only one with the evidence and calculation to ferret him or her out.

Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Brian Grazer, Steve Zaillian, and Ridley Scott team to tell the true juggernaut success story of a cult hero from the streets of 1970s Harlem in

Nobody used to notice Frank Lucas (Oscar® winner Washington), the quiet driver to one of the inner city’s leading black crime bosses. But when his boss suddenly dies, Frank exploits the opening in the power structure to build his own empire and. create his own version of the American Dream. Through ingenuity and a strict business ethic, he comes to rule the inner-city drug trade, flooding the streets with a purer product at a better price. Lucas outplays all of the leading crime syndicates and becomes not only one of the city’s mainline corrupters, but part of its circle of legit civic superstars.

Richie Roberts (Oscar® winner Crowe) is an outcast cop close enough to the streets to feel a shift of control in the drug underworld. Roberts believes someone is climbing the rungs above the known Mafia families and starts to suspect that a black power player has come from nowhere to dominate the scene. Both Lucas and Roberts share a rigorous ethical code that sets them apart from their own colleagues, making them lone figures on opposite sides of the law. The destinies of these two men will become intertwined as they approach a confrontation where only one of them can come out on top.

A novelization by Max Allan Collins

Based on the motion picture screenplay by Steven Zaillian