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I Mobster
I, Mobster rips open the dark heart of the American Dream—where loyalty is a racket, love is a setup, and the only way out is in a coffin.
Tony Mauriello clawed his way out of the gutter and into a penthouse—one shakedown, one payoff, one corpse at a time. From waterfront dives to Park Avenue suites, he bought cops, broke men, and took whatever he wanted… especially women. He treated murder like simple bookkeeping. But every score comes with a price, and even a mob king can’t muscle fate.
The original, 1951 novel sold milions of copies was adapted into the 1959 film I Mobster, directed by Roger Corman and starring Steve Cochran.
The book's actual author was writer and publisher Joseph Hilton Smyth (1901-1972). In 1942, Smyth and two of his business partners were convicted of acting as agents of the Japanese government and sentenced to seven years in prison. They'd used Japanese money to fund their publishing enterprises...in return for spreading pro-Japan propaganda. After his release, he wrote several novels (some as "Joseph Hilton," "Hilton Smith," and "Anonymous") including The Sex Probers and The Nuder Gender, and edited the Saturday Review of Literature.
Tony Mauriello clawed his way out of the gutter and into a penthouse—one shakedown, one payoff, one corpse at a time. From waterfront dives to Park Avenue suites, he bought cops, broke men, and took whatever he wanted… especially women. He treated murder like simple bookkeeping. But every score comes with a price, and even a mob king can’t muscle fate.
The original, 1951 novel sold milions of copies was adapted into the 1959 film I Mobster, directed by Roger Corman and starring Steve Cochran.
The book's actual author was writer and publisher Joseph Hilton Smyth (1901-1972). In 1942, Smyth and two of his business partners were convicted of acting as agents of the Japanese government and sentenced to seven years in prison. They'd used Japanese money to fund their publishing enterprises...in return for spreading pro-Japan propaganda. After his release, he wrote several novels (some as "Joseph Hilton," "Hilton Smith," and "Anonymous") including The Sex Probers and The Nuder Gender, and edited the Saturday Review of Literature.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 28, 2025
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January 10, 2026
Originally printed by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1958, “I, Mobster” has now been republished by Cutting Edge Books. It was authored by “Anonymous,” purposefully it would appear because it is the tale of the rise and fall of a 1930’s New York mobster told in the first person as if it is the author’s own personal confession. Nowadays, though, it is not a secret who wrote it. That would be one Joseph Hilton Smyth who is most well-known apparently for “convicted in 1942 for acting as agents for the Japanese Government in 1940 (a year before we were at war with Japan) without registering with the State Department. He and two others had an agreement for what was once a princely sum of $125,000 to publish pro-Japan stories.
Smyth had a minor career in writing, publishing Angels in the Gutter in 1955, I, Mobster in 1958, espionage novel President’s Agent in 1963, and Baron Sinister (1965) (which continued the espionage stories of Gould). He also penned an autobiography in 1940 (To Nowhere and Return: The Autobiography of a Puritan in 1940). I, Mobster was also released as a 1959 film under the same title.
I, Mobster is a surprisingly well written novel, considering how low the output of Smyth’s pulp writing was. I, Mobster describes Tony’s rise from a runt of six or seven first witnessing a mob execution in the street (“One of the men laughed and pointed down with the gun in his hand. I heard the sounds again and on the sidewalk the man’s head made funny, jerky movements. Then he didn’t have a face any more—just blood-red meat like in the butcher store”) to one of the purveyors of mob rule. Included in the story are actual mobster names, particularly with the Genovese Crime Family, including Lucky Luciano.
What makes this novel sing so well is that you hear the motivations from Tony’s own mouth. He says he learned what the score was just as soon as he was old enough to be out on the streets. “You had to know or you didn’t last long. Everything was a fight – a fight just to exist.” His motivation: “I knew what I wanted now. I wanted out of the stinking slums I’d been born in.”
Tony was a small guy even with “Big Sam” backing him up. So he had to be clever and come up with schemes that no one else had thought up. “Like in any other business, you had to keep moving. You couldn’t never rest and take things easy. If you stood still some other mob would catch up with you and pass you by.”‘
Tony, though, does not make it sound like it was all wine and roses. He had to watch things twenty five hours a day and could never trust anyone to have his back. He did not date and could never settle down because he did not live that lifestyle. And, you had to keep moving, keep climbing, or some younger mover up and comer would stomp you out of the way.
Reading this, you get the whole story of Tony’s career, extending over decades, and just enough name-dropping to make you believe that it is real and that he really was one of those wiseguys.
Smyth had a minor career in writing, publishing Angels in the Gutter in 1955, I, Mobster in 1958, espionage novel President’s Agent in 1963, and Baron Sinister (1965) (which continued the espionage stories of Gould). He also penned an autobiography in 1940 (To Nowhere and Return: The Autobiography of a Puritan in 1940). I, Mobster was also released as a 1959 film under the same title.
I, Mobster is a surprisingly well written novel, considering how low the output of Smyth’s pulp writing was. I, Mobster describes Tony’s rise from a runt of six or seven first witnessing a mob execution in the street (“One of the men laughed and pointed down with the gun in his hand. I heard the sounds again and on the sidewalk the man’s head made funny, jerky movements. Then he didn’t have a face any more—just blood-red meat like in the butcher store”) to one of the purveyors of mob rule. Included in the story are actual mobster names, particularly with the Genovese Crime Family, including Lucky Luciano.
What makes this novel sing so well is that you hear the motivations from Tony’s own mouth. He says he learned what the score was just as soon as he was old enough to be out on the streets. “You had to know or you didn’t last long. Everything was a fight – a fight just to exist.” His motivation: “I knew what I wanted now. I wanted out of the stinking slums I’d been born in.”
Tony was a small guy even with “Big Sam” backing him up. So he had to be clever and come up with schemes that no one else had thought up. “Like in any other business, you had to keep moving. You couldn’t never rest and take things easy. If you stood still some other mob would catch up with you and pass you by.”‘
Tony, though, does not make it sound like it was all wine and roses. He had to watch things twenty five hours a day and could never trust anyone to have his back. He did not date and could never settle down because he did not live that lifestyle. And, you had to keep moving, keep climbing, or some younger mover up and comer would stomp you out of the way.
Reading this, you get the whole story of Tony’s career, extending over decades, and just enough name-dropping to make you believe that it is real and that he really was one of those wiseguys.
Displaying 1 of 1 review