The Mucker

“The Mucker“ is a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, an American fiction writer, who created such great characters as Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. This is the first book in the Mucker series.

• Billy Byrne is a low-class American born in Chicago's ghetto.
• He grows up a thief and a mugger.

• He chooses a life of robbery and violence, disrespecting those who work for a living.
• He has a deep hatred for wealthy society.
• He trains as a prizefighter but cannot stop drinking.
• When falsely accused of murder, he flees to San Francisco and is shanghaied aboard a ship.

"Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough." He is not chivalrous nor kind and has only meager ethics - never giving evidence against a friend or leaving someone behind.