Inspired by the Roaring '20s, Nick Deffenbaugh wrote "Racketeers" (AuthorHouse 2009, $25.99), a novel that interweaves historical events from those intriguing days of bootleg gin, flappers, Tommy guns and speakeasies.

"I've always been fascinated with that time period," the Griffith resident said. It "was such an uncanny, bizarre time. I think (newsman-screenwriter) Mark Hellinger said it best when he said, 'It was a dangerous, lawless, high-tension era that will grow more and more incredible with each passing year until someday people will say it never could have happened at all.'"

In the book, Tommie Trent, who runs a successful speakeasy, has a serious problem. He's saved gangster Fat Eddie's life and the mobster's daughter loves him. But Trent loves Dottie Deuce, a beautiful woman he's known since they were youngsters growing up in the same neighborhood.

Fat Eddie doesn't like that. But besides that headache, other bootleggers are competing for Trent's business. It's not easy for Trent in the craziness of the 1920s.

"I have always been a fan of the great Warner Bros. gangster movies from the 1930's, and that has no doubt influenced me heavily," said Deffenbaugh, 29, who writes at night and works days as a warehouse manager for Strack and Van Til in Highland. "But I think of my book as more than just a gangster story. It is also a love story and a story about fate and the different roads people take in strange and desperate times."

The first-time author, a freelance writer who has written about Dillinger, did a lot of research to recreate the glamour and unease of the times.

"Although that crazy decade began nearly 80 years ago, it was an important time in our nation's history and is just as relevant to our everyday lives now as it was then," he said. "For better or for worse, it is part of what made us who we are today."

"Racketeers" is available at barnesandnoble.com.