Review: Pinkerton's Great Detective

Pinkerton's Great Detective

By Beau Riffenburgh

Viking November 2013

400 pages

From the library 

James McParland was revered and vilified during his lifetime. He worked for the (in)famous Pinkerton's Detective Agency, where he was responsible for bringing down the Molly Maguires and other union ringleaders. He rose in the ranks of the detective agency and oversaw the successful investigations of major corporations, train robberies, and Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. In this book, Beau Riffenburgh attempts to sort out if McParland was really the greatest hero of his time or a mastermind who lied, cheated, and murdered to get his man and the fame that came with closing his case.

This book is billed as a book about James McParland and it is, to some extent. But more than that, it is a very extensive look at the birth of labor unions in the US and the early justice system. For someone who is praised as a great detective, we just don't get a lot of insight into McParland's methods or his cases. It feels, rather, like a very thorough overview of American labor during this time period as opposed to a straight biography. McParland is just one player in a much larger story. 

Riffenburgh really creates an atmosphere of a country grappling with lawlessness. The justice system is in it infancy and much of it is privatized. Men like McParland who were trying to do right in a world of violence sometimes must act in less than honorable ways to catch their man. The author states from the outset that his goal was to discover if the great detective was a hero or a villain. Through his research, he discovers that McParland, like most of us, was neither. While this may make James McParland more human, it doesn't necessarily make for better reading. This book, for all of its meticulous research, lacks a narrative or a driving force that compels you to keep reading.

Beau Riffenburgh is an impressive historian. He has closely researched the life of one of history's most controversial lawmen, along with the time in which he lived. But McParland's choice to keep the details of his life intentionally vague means that despite Riffenburgh's best efforts, we are left with an incomplete picture of his subject. While this is not a book that will keep you turning pages late into the night, it is our most comprehensive look at a tumultuous time in history and the man who attempted to keep order through it all.