Pinkerton's Great Detective

September 9, 2013
This energetic biography sheds light on a master undercover operative for the famed Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. The iconic sleuth of his time, first hired by Pinkerton in 1873, McParland made his name (as well as the company’s) investigating the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irishmen whose crimes terrorized the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. McParland went on to become Pinkerton’s western superintendent and oversaw investigations into Butch Cassidy and the Western Federation of Miners. Though the idealized McParland would appear in the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett, the man himself proves far more flawed: he perjured himself to assure the sentencing of his victims, and often helped shrewd industrialists exploit an abused labor force. As a result, historians have both revered and lambasted him. Riffenburgh (Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition) takes up the “conundrum” of McParland’s moral character and transforms legal and business records into a cinematic adventure through meticulous research. However, despite the momentum of the Molly Maguires’ narrative in the book’s first half, the episodes of detection from later in McParland’s career are disconnected. Despite these lags, Riffenburgh brings a forgotten rough-and-tumble world to life. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.

November 15, 2013
Straightforward biography of a man famous in his day for his work with the infamous Pinkerton's Detective Agency. In introducing the book, Riffenburgh (Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, 2006, etc.) notes that the legacy of his subject is murky, with history unable to decide whether James McParland (1843-1919) was a hero or a villain. "Thus, there is a clear need for a reassessment of the Great Detective," he writes. "Only through thorough study can a deeper understanding be gained of a man whose public persona was so divergent...." The author immediately gets down to that business, first briefly laying out McParland's early years before jumping into the history of his job with Pinkerton's. Riffenburgh focuses on McParland's two most sensational cases, both involving mining unions and violence possibly perpetrated by union members. The detective first infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a violent group that did not seem to be aligned with the union, and his informing on that group made him both famous and infamous. The case also seemed to cement for McParland that mine owners were upright citizens terrorized by violent employee factions, which informed his future work in union/mine cases. Later, in charge of Pinkerton's offices in the Western United States, he oversaw investigations into many unions and alleged union violence. Though detailed in recounting the investigations and trials in which McParland was involved, there is little new information here, and the court cases, repetitive in nature, slow the narrative considerably. In the end, Riffenburgh admits that there really is no private persona to consult and that the "divergent" nature he previously acknowledged in McParland's public persona leaves the mystery of who he actually was just as shrouded as in the beginning of the work. While no doubt true, it's a disappointing conclusion for those hoping for fresh insights. Not quite a reassessment but a thorough consideration of two of McParland's major court cases and the investigations that preceded them.

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June 1, 2013
Riffenburgh, who has a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge, hotfoots it over to America to write about the Pinkerton National Detective Agency's most celebrated agent, James McParland, who took on the Molly Maguires, Butch Cassidy, and more.

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