MS 4 The Asphalt Handbook

'Doc' Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is a legendary crime 'mastermind'. He has just been released from prison. He has a new scheme for a million-dollar burglary. He enlists safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), reinforcer Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), experienced driver Gus (recognize James Whitmore) and financial backing by Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Staffing is a problem for legitimate business as well as the nefarious types and a smooth heist becomes fraught with an accumulation of errors that spiral out of control. What the viewer sees is a masterpiece of the "noir" genre with subtle reference to a disaffected urban underground community.

W.R. Burnett’s The Asphalt Jungle unfolds in short, vivid bursts of atmosphere and character — a tough and seemingly artless kind of American fiction that reaches out from another era. Yet the novel still slices to the bone in its depiction of the duplicity and corruption that undoes a group of ambitious crooks. Burnett (1899-1981) was a prolific novelist and screenwriter whose terse, concentrated style and stark understanding of human nature made him one of the definitive masters of modern crime fiction.