Gangbuster
One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan
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- 14,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
A gripping and exhaustively researched, first-time account of a feared gangbuster’s groundbreaking battles with organized crime, the KKK, and corruption at the highest levels of government sure to resonate with readers affected by the politics of contemporary society.
At the height of the roaring 1920s, the ex-frontier town of Denver, Colorado, emerged from the postwar boom as the future of the American city. But the slick façade of progress and opportunity masked a murky stew of organized crime, elaborate swindles, and widespread government corruption. One man risked everything to alter the course of history.
Rookie district attorney Phillip Van Cise was already making national headlines for a new brand of law enforcement. Employing military intelligence tools he’d developed during the Great War—wiretapping, undercover operatives, communication intercepts—Van Cise crippled the criminal empire of Lou Blonger, an ex-lawman who had risen from petty scam artist to master of the Big Con. But Van Cise had even darker, more malevolent forces on his radar.
The Ku Klux Klan had emerged as a shockingly mainstream middle-class movement, employing anti-immigration scare tactics, encouraging vigilantism, and instigating culture wars, all while claiming to protect true American values. Van Cise saw the toxic ideology for what it was: a new version of the Big Con sold as populism. Utilizing his pioneering surveillance techniques, Van Cise was determined to expose the Invisible Empire from within.
Gripping and exhaustively researched, this prescient chronicle of Phillip Van Cise’s spectacular career as a feared gangbuster taking on organized crime, the KKK, and corruption at the highest levels of government is a cautionary tale that mirrors our tumultuous times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set against the backdrop of 1920s Denver, this colorful real-life legal thriller spotlights crusading district attorney Philip Sidney Van Cise. According to journalist Prendergast (The Poison Tree), "the web of graft and corruption had been evolving for years and now spanned the city, from the courts to the jails to the mayor's office." Into this cauldron stepped Van Cise, who had "a singular talent for sniffing out a con and exposing it." First, he used electronic surveillance technology, undercover operatives, and counterintelligence measures to take down Lou "The Fixer" Blonger and his "Million Dollar Bunco Ring" of more than 30 con artists. Heralded as a hero, Van Cise got a much different reaction when he turned his attention to the KKK, which was steadily growing in size and influence and claimed to have nearly 50,000 Colorado members in early 1924. The KKK and its "fat little" local leader, homeopathic doctor John Galen Locke, had deep ties to Denver's political establishment, fraternal organizations, and Protestant churches. Though Van Cise left office before he could bring charges against Locke and others, he watched the organization fall into disgrace by 1926. Rollicking yet scrupulously researched, this is an entertaining tribute to a brazen crimefighter.
