Razzle Dazzle is not a work of fiction. The people, place and events are real. It is an account of organized crime in Northern Kentucky; its growth, its power, and finally, its ouster. Messick traces the many features of the area "across the river from Cincinnati" that led to its derisvely affectionate label of "Little Mexico": the religious divisions, the geographic and social alienation from the rest of the Commonweath of Kentucky, a unique blend of urban realizties and rural or small-town values, the shaping force of a dark capitalism that created power blocs and power brokers and a strange morality that separated private and public ethics.