Pinkerton's Great Detective

The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland

By: Beau Riffenburgh

Narrated by: Andrew Garman

Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

©2013 Wildebeest Publishing Ltd. (P)2013 Recorded Books

Solid

The story was interesting and honest, fair, and laced with as much detail as could be offered about a relatively scantly-historied character. I longed for more tidbits of historical context because I enjoyed what was presented. Sometimes I felt it needed a little narrative connectedness to drive it along, but I'm new to biographies, so that might be just the nature of the beast. The reading sounded strangely robotic--it was clear and normally inflected, but there was a strange mechanical undertone that sometimes grated, possibly a result of the recording. Overall a solid read, though.

I hoped I would have enjoyed it more

It was well but not great. I never felt like it had a murder mystery plot. The book as a whole deals with labor unions and big business. There’s gang type murders but nothing that ever really jumped out at me. The prologue was the best part in my opinion. The subject matter sounded fascinating. I just never got into the book.

Great piece on private detectives

The days of private detectives are long gone in today’s America, but their history truly is fascinating. And perhaps no other man besides the Pinkerton’s themselves embodies the life of a private detective better than McParland. Undercover Sabotage, Subterfuge, shootings, bombings, and interrogations. This guy really was the turn of the century’s James Bond. From coal fields of the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains of the western frontier, this book takes you on the crazy life of a forgotten profession. You’d have a hard time finding a man who lived a more interesting life in American (or even world) history. The only downside is the reading of the book is somewhat flat. Not bad by any means, but just doesn’t seem to fully bring to life the material.