Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland by Beau Riffenburgh (PDF)

Description

The story of the legendary Pinkerton detective who took down the Molly Maguires and the Wild Bunch. The operatives of the Pinkerton’ s National Detective Agency were renowned for their skills of subterfuge, infiltration, and investigation, none more so than James McParland. So thrilling were McParland’ s cases that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle included the cunning detective in a story along with Sherlock Holmes. Riffenburgh digs deep into the recently released Pinkerton archives to present the first biography of McParland and the agency’ s cloak-and-dagger methods. Both action-packed and meticulously researched, Pinkerton’ s Great Detective brings readers along on McParland’ s most challenging cases: from young McParland’ s infiltration of the murderous Molly Maguires gang in the case that launched his career to his hunt for the notorious Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch to his controversial investigation of the Western Federation of Mines in the assassination of Idaho’ s former governor. Filled with outlaws and criminals, detectives and lawmen, Pinkerton’ s Great Detective shines a light upon the celebrated secretive agency and its premier sleuth.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Meticulously researched and informative. Worth the effort to read it. The subject matter ranged far beyond a simple biography of James McParland or a book on the Pinkerton Detective agency. I waffled between 3 and 4 stars. At times the writing seemed jerky and at times it became overly detailed for anyone other than the seriously obsessive compulsive history addict. McParlands career spanned close to 50 years. The scope of the story defies a simple summation. The wide range of unrelated cases, the large cast of characters and level of detail makes the book drag on in places. The Kindle edition lacked the X-Reference that would have helped track the large cast of characters. But, the book is still very readable and very interesting: connecting unrelated but historically significant events to the life of a single individual. A real accomplishment and deserving of 4 stars.

⭐Very interesting, weaves the history of railroads, mine owners, miners, early privatized law enforcement for hire, labor and mentality of gangs showing how hard to separate the ‘good guys’ from the few what we’d now call terrorists. A little repetitive and hard to follow at times, but this may be more of the complexity of tying all these things together

⭐Perhaps I am biased. My Great great uncle was Martin L’Velle a lawyer referred to several times in this book because he was one of the lawyers for the Molly Maguires. The book is certainly worth the read but, in evaluating the evidence in the Molly trials, the author lacks the eye of a trial lawyer who might be a bit more skeptical about the Pinkerton agency which was know for exaggeration since its early days frightening Washington with reports of 200,000 Confederates preparing to attack the Capital.

⭐Good service, book exactly as described. This is a great read especially if you have an interest in the Molly Maguires.

⭐This was a biography that needed to be done. Unfortunately many questions cannot be answered due to the nature of James McParland himself. What did disturb me, however, about this book is that the footnotes are not in the book itself. One must go online to read them. I have never seen this before and hope this is not a trend. The footnotes are extremely important in evaluating the scholarship of a book.Barbara M. Fahy

⭐Amazing book for anybody from Northeast who has an interest in the coal regions history. The author cites his sources and backs up his claims and how he acquired his information.

⭐The book really adds no new information. The author has used already published sources. The information on Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch is dated and not the latest informaiton. I was very dissapointed in the publisher leaving out the source information and leaves the reader only able to look at them through the publisher’s website. And how long before they are no longer available on the website? Definately not worth the cost of the book.

⭐Very interesting book.Well worth the read.

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