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    Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of James McParland, America's Sherlock Holmes
    Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of James McParland, America's Sherlock Holmes
    Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of James McParland, America's Sherlock Holmes
    Audiobook18 hours

    Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of James McParland, America's Sherlock Holmes

    Written by Beau Riffenburgh

    Narrated by Andrew Garman

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 20, 2013
    ISBN9781470392291
    Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of James McParland, America's Sherlock Holmes
    Author

    Beau Riffenburgh

    Beau Riffenburgh is an historian specialising in exploration, particularly that of the Antarctic, Arctic, and Africa. Born in California, he earned his doctorate at Cambridge University, following which he joined the staff at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where he served for 14 years as the editor of Polar Record. He is the author of the highly regarded Nimrod: Ernest Shackleton and the Extraordinary Story of the 1907-09 British Antarctic Expedition and The Myth of the Explorer. He also served as Editor of the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic.

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    Reviews for Pinkerton's Great Detective

    4/5

    12 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I will fully admit that I do not usually like biographies; I find them very dry and I can't keep up with all of the facts that they throw in my face. But this book is an exception to that rule. I picked it up for the sole reason of it being about true crime, a subject that I love, and stayed with it for the writing, people, and story. Albeit the serious fact-dropping at times and loads of people involved, James McParland was a fascinating individual and thus makes a wonderful subject for a biography. The author clearly loves McParland's story and has set his heart and soul into describing every little detail of his life, though that does make it somewhat tedious at times. But otherwise, it was either action-packed or jaw-dropping, depending on the moment.
    • 3/5
      Before we had an FBI, the United States had the Pinkerton's Detective Agency, a private security agency that worked on behalf of members of the government (providing private security for President Abraham Lincoln), of various law enforcement efforts (particularly in hunting outlaws in the Wild West), and as union busters by various industries (particularly mining and railroad concerns. In my head, Pinkerton's detectives are synonymous with defeating outlaws and bashing the heads of workers trying to get better safety regulations and pay from their corporate overlords.Pinkerton's Great Detective tells the story of James McParland - the agencies most famous operative. This is a man who went undercover to infiltrate the Molly Maguires, met Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear, and foiled an attempt to assassinate Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. He was a ruthless, tireless, inventive man whose constant presence on behalf of business' attempting to destroy the rights of their workers also makes him very unsympathetic to me, despite my admiration of his sheer courage. He was an interesting man in an interesting time and Mr. Riffenburgh places him firmly within the context of the laws and mores of his time.This book is very detailed and provides a great deal of information about people and events surrounding McParland, especially important for fleshing out a story where facts are very thin on the ground. The pacing of this book is a bit slow, best devoured in chunks between other lighter reading, but it's an interesting story and, while it doesn't redeem McParland for me it did teach me lots of things about his time that I didn't know.
    • 4/5
      Some of the great parts of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid come when Paul Newman turns to Robert Redford and asks, "Who are those guys?" That question eventually led Beau Riffenburgh to this biography of Pinkerton agent James McParland, who tracked the Hole in the Wall Gang and went undercover in tough mining towns across the country. A poor Irish immigrant who raised himself from nothing and lived by his wits for years, McParland drew both praise and scorn during his lifetime as an undercover agent who infiltrated the Molly Maguires in an era of deadly Pennsylvania coal mine violence before heading out west.Riffenburgh is a conscience researcher and writer who uncovers the records of McParland's actions and writings. This is essential in a biography such as this, as one's view of the subject may well depend on one's political viewpoint. Was McParland a turncoat to his people or someone who served justice?Well, it depends a great deal on one's point of view. Riffenburgh does a great job of placing McParland within his own times. Those were far different from today's in that criminal cases were brought by those who could afford to prosecute. But there also are parallels to today with company owners who want to pay workers the least amount possible, have them indebted to the company store and still be able to fire them at will.For McParland to drop into such a situation, and possibly with the ultimate goal of making sure he followed the tenents of his church, Riffenburgh makes it easy to see that his subject's role was not easy. The author also uses the array of historical record available to not sway the reader, but instead to place the reader squarely within the context of what can be shown of those turbulent times.The author also does a thorough job of describing the times in which McParland operated from more than one viewpoint. Mine owners and workers who were either indebted to the company store or faced being fired did not view the world in the same way, and Riffenburgh does well to describe both viewpoints. The even-handed approach may not change anyone's mind, but it does bring into focus what the stakes were for everyone involved, including McParland.For anyone who wondered the same thing that Paul Newman did in that classic film, and for those wonder about those times, Pinkerton's Great Detective is an excellent way to find some answers.
    • 3/5
      ARC provided by NetGalleyThe detectives of the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency were renowned worldwide for their skills and investigative capabilities, perhaps none more so that James McParland. In this book, Riffenburgh digs into the Pinkerton archives and other archives across the country to give us the first biography of McParland and some of the method's the agency used. Riffenburgh takes us on some of McParland's greatest adventures ranging from his infiltration of the Molly Maguires gang to his hunt for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.Although Riffenburgh has done extensive research into trying to trace the life of McParalnd, he openly admits that much of what he found maybe inaccurate, due to McParland often hiding details of his own life. Given this knowledge Riffenburgh tries to fill in the story with information about other people that we do know more about, such as Pinkerton himself. As such, the book is less a biography of McParland, but...more of a story of Pinkerton and his crew, with the central character being McParland. This at times leads to some stilted storytelling as we switch from discussing McParland to tracing the foundations of the Pinkerton detective agency to discussing former players in the development of the Pinkerton detective agency. While it adds more detail to the story, it also makes it feel like we need a legend to keep up with the characters.Overall, this is an interesting book on the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and in particular McParland, but one that tended to wander a bit for me. I'd recommend this book to fans of history and true crime. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.