Noir Afloat

Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California

by Ernest Marquez

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It’s Ernest Marquez’s latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.

Cornero’s story is filled with every tantalizing tidbit of the era. The law’s conquest of Cornero and the gambling ships helped to jump-start the career of Earl Warren from California attorney general to governor to Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Glitz, gangsters, and under-the-table politics—it’s all here in the book that represents thirty years of research by best-selling Southern California author Ernest Marquez, whose unparalleled collection of images and memorabilia is showcased in Noir Afloat.

208 pages
full color throughout
200+ images
9"x9"
hardcover; ISBN 978-1-883318-66-6; $40.00