The message in the fourth installment seems to be that crime can also be entertainment. Shulman's message in the first three books is that crime does not pay. In The Devil's Knee, former Amboy Dukes Larry and Bull (now called by his proper name, Simon) and Joyce take up residence in Beverly Hills, where they deal with Joyce's spectacularly wayward daughter Verney.

In The Big Brokers, Wolf and two other former members of the Dukes are sent to Nevada to run one of the crime family's casinos in Las Vegas. Cry Tough! has another member of the Dukes, Mitchell Wolf, return from prison and, after trying unsuccessfully to 'go straight,' become a member of an organized crime family. In The Amboy Dukes, two members of the gang accidentally shoot and kill one of their teachers a third member of the Dukes kills one of them before the story is over. Two subsequent novels, Cry Tough! and The Big Brokers, followed the equally grim experiences of some of the characters who survived The Amboy Dukes, but with somewhat less emphasis on their being practitioners of Judaism. It sold five million copies and led to his being hired as a screenwriter by Warner Bros. Published in 1947, The Amboy Dukes examined the grim, and sometimes short, lives of teenage street criminals in Brooklyn during World War II notably, its primary characters were described as being Jewish. He subsequently spent most of the war in Washington, D.C., working for the War Department's troop education program, where he wrote for Army Talk. Īfter graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa and earning a master's degree from Columbia University, he served in the Army during World War II. Later, Shulman used his treatment as the basis for his 1956 novel Children of the Dark. Stewart Stern did the screenplay based on the story concepts of Shulman and director Nicholas Ray. Shulman wrote the early film treatment for Rebel Without a Cause. His books included The Amboy Dukes, Cry Tough, The Square Trap, and Platinum High School, all of which were adapted into movies. Irving Shulman (– March 23, 1995) was an American author and screenwriter whose works were adapted into movies.

Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

West Side Story by Irving Shulman