Allan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye

Mackay's story of Pinkerton (1819-1884), founder of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency is much more than a biography. It is a colorful history of 19th-century America that is told through the prism of one life that intersected with many fascinating characters and unlikely, though true, events. The Scottish-born Pinkerton fled to the U.S. after being hounded by the police as a radical militant. In Pinkerton's own telling, he and his 15-year-old bride were shipwrecked near the coast and then robbed by Indians after they made shore. Eventually, they arrived in Dundee, Ill., where Pinkerton worked as a cooper. Not long after, on a trip to find timber for his barrels, Pinkerton discovered and helped capture a band of counterfeiters. He then joined the regular constabulary for a few years before striking out on his own in 1850. Pinkertons would be involved in many of America's great criminal cases; they clashed with the James gang, pursued Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, infiltrated the Mafia and investigated the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. But Pinkerton also left his mark in a larger arena: he hired the first women detectives, helped to create the idea of a secret service while protecting President Abraham Lincoln, and was instrumental in Civil War espionage for the Union. Although the agency is still active today in international police work, for most Americans, the Pinkertons are indelibly linked to the suppression of various labor actions. Mackay, the Scotch author of entertaining biographies of Michael Collins, William Wallace and Robert Service, provides plenty of details of the man and his times, but without sacrificing his fluid narrative. (Sept.) FYI: Allan's son William Pinkerton was a major player in Ben Macintyre's Napoleon of Crime: The Extraordinary Story of Adam Worth, the World's Greatest Modern Criminal from FSG. (Forecasts, May 26)