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Thirty Years a Detective
The Pinkerton Agency was founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton. He was instrumental in bringing down the James gang, the Molly Maguires, the Reno brothers and other criminals of the day. During the Civil War Pinkerton foiled an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. Pinkerton opens a window to America and its history with a little bravado, a little humor and adds the detail that made him the most famous lawman of his day.
600 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1884
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About the author
Allan Pinkerton
174 books15 followersNotorious agency of Scottish-American detective Allan Pinkerton broke strikes and disrupted labor efforts to unionize.
People best know this spy for creating the national agency. In 1849, people in Chicago first appointed Pinkerton. In the 1850s, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the northwestern police agency, later known nationally and still in existence today as Pinkerton consulting and investigations, a subsidiary of Securitas Aktiebolag.
Business insignia of Pinkerton included a wide open eye with the caption, "We never sleep."
People posthumously published exploits of his agents, perhaps some ghostwritten for promotion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_P...
People best know this spy for creating the national agency. In 1849, people in Chicago first appointed Pinkerton. In the 1850s, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the northwestern police agency, later known nationally and still in existence today as Pinkerton consulting and investigations, a subsidiary of Securitas Aktiebolag.
Business insignia of Pinkerton included a wide open eye with the caption, "We never sleep."
People posthumously published exploits of his agents, perhaps some ghostwritten for promotion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_P...
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 6, 2012
The introduction in the edition I read (published in 1975 as part of the Patterson Smith Series in Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems) notes that this book,
What Thirty Years a Detective actually is, is a description of different kinds of property crimes in the United States, mainly in the 1870s and early 80s. It's important to specify property crimes because here's the list of chapters:
People I've been talking to about this book have been surprised to hear that in the descriptions of all of these crimes, there's almost no mention of violence. Except in the case of gangs of several criminals who are stealing something of great value and who have immense punishment at stake, there is no mention of thieves carrying weapons, threatening anyone with violence, or killing anyone in an attempt to get away. The description of smaller robberies (e.g. of hotel rooms) usually includes the robbers' plans for getting away without pursuit, which absolutely require them not to threaten anyone physically. There are a few shoot-outs in examples about the capture of gangs of expert counterfeiters, and one group of bank robbers tied up a bank clerk and his family in the middle of the night while they used his key to rob the bank, but that's about it.
There are a number of hypotheses one could venture as to why Pinkerton didn't write about violent crimes, but I suspect the strongest one has to do with advertising the Pinkerton Detective Agency to rich clients who will hire detectives to guard their loot!
You see, Thirty Years a Detective isn't really about the work of detecting. It could more properly be titled "Thirty Years of Really Awesome Criminals and Their Ingenious Methods." Most of the chapters contain step-by-step descriptions of the stages of a robbery and all the tools (sometimes with diagrams, so that the reader could probably make his or her own) used to break into a hotel room or a safe. (Most of these methods obviously wouldn't work today, but authors of historical fiction should appreciate the physical descriptions of various settings and the workings of financial institutions!) This is accompanied by praise of the inventive American spirit embodied in our national thieves, and when individual criminals are mentioned by name they're always geniuses, the best ever, the most famous. The author follows all this promptly with moral reflections on how crime really never pays, but the point is clear: (1) Thieves are probably smarter and harder-working than you, so (2) Your only hope is to hire a Pinkerton detective and make sure your bank and your safe deposit company, railway, hotel, and steamboat hire Pinkerton detectives too.
This all makes for a very entertaining book; the downside is that it's rather badly written. My hypothesis here is that Pinkerton was paying the person who filled in his outline by the word. What's written in 600 pages could have taken fewer than 400, without repetitiveness, puffery, and moralizing. (The engraved illustrations are also badly done. I suppose poorly-drawn illustrations were common in the 19th century; it's just that I've had less reason to read the books containing them!)
which was first published in 1884, is one of eighteen books which appeared under Allan Pinkerton's name from 1874 to 1885. "Written in a pleasant style, the books sold like novels and did much to advance the fame and prestige of Pinkerton's name," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Dictionary of American Biography, and certainly their novelistic approach might explain the inaccuracies and exaggerations which appear in many of these works. We do know from a letter Allan Pinkerton wrote to his son Robert that the father supplied "outlines" to "writers" in his employ (without, apparently, reading their work in proof). Thirty Years a Detective, although not entirely free from these shortcomings, remains one of the most valuable of Pinkerton's works, as much for its depiction of the criminal culture of the author's time as for its biographical content.First, I should like to say that there is almost no biographical content in Thirty Years a Detective, apart from that supplied by the newer introduction. There is some mention of the doings of "my son, Robert A. Pinkerton" and "my son, William A. Pinkerton" and on occasion the (putative) narrator himself is said to be involved in a case, but usually only through another agent.
What Thirty Years a Detective actually is, is a description of different kinds of property crimes in the United States, mainly in the 1870s and early 80s. It's important to specify property crimes because here's the list of chapters:
The Society Thief(In a boodle, the swindlers tell their victim that they have a lot of really good counterfeit money, which they will sell for a smaller amount of real money. They show the victim a real $20 or $50 bill, saying that it's the counterfeit. When the victim delivers payment, the swindlers give a box of paper or sawdust. Steamboat operators are just thieves who operate on steamboats. Burglars, in the chapter devoted to them, rob a bank not by forgery or sneaking about, but by digging through the walls of the strongroom at night.)
The Pickpocket
Store Robbers
The "Boodle" Game
Hotel Thieves
Sneak Thieving
Palace Car Thieves
Steamboat Operators
House Breaking
Confidence and Blackmail
The Burglar
Forgers and Forging
Counterfeiting and Counterfeiters
The Express Robber
People I've been talking to about this book have been surprised to hear that in the descriptions of all of these crimes, there's almost no mention of violence. Except in the case of gangs of several criminals who are stealing something of great value and who have immense punishment at stake, there is no mention of thieves carrying weapons, threatening anyone with violence, or killing anyone in an attempt to get away. The description of smaller robberies (e.g. of hotel rooms) usually includes the robbers' plans for getting away without pursuit, which absolutely require them not to threaten anyone physically. There are a few shoot-outs in examples about the capture of gangs of expert counterfeiters, and one group of bank robbers tied up a bank clerk and his family in the middle of the night while they used his key to rob the bank, but that's about it.
There are a number of hypotheses one could venture as to why Pinkerton didn't write about violent crimes, but I suspect the strongest one has to do with advertising the Pinkerton Detective Agency to rich clients who will hire detectives to guard their loot!
You see, Thirty Years a Detective isn't really about the work of detecting. It could more properly be titled "Thirty Years of Really Awesome Criminals and Their Ingenious Methods." Most of the chapters contain step-by-step descriptions of the stages of a robbery and all the tools (sometimes with diagrams, so that the reader could probably make his or her own) used to break into a hotel room or a safe. (Most of these methods obviously wouldn't work today, but authors of historical fiction should appreciate the physical descriptions of various settings and the workings of financial institutions!) This is accompanied by praise of the inventive American spirit embodied in our national thieves, and when individual criminals are mentioned by name they're always geniuses, the best ever, the most famous. The author follows all this promptly with moral reflections on how crime really never pays, but the point is clear: (1) Thieves are probably smarter and harder-working than you, so (2) Your only hope is to hire a Pinkerton detective and make sure your bank and your safe deposit company, railway, hotel, and steamboat hire Pinkerton detectives too.
This all makes for a very entertaining book; the downside is that it's rather badly written. My hypothesis here is that Pinkerton was paying the person who filled in his outline by the word. What's written in 600 pages could have taken fewer than 400, without repetitiveness, puffery, and moralizing. (The engraved illustrations are also badly done. I suppose poorly-drawn illustrations were common in the 19th century; it's just that I've had less reason to read the books containing them!)
November 26, 2016
Although this is by no means a great book, it is well worth reading as a historical document. The book is not a biography or autobiography of Allan Pinkerton. If you want that, look elsewhere. It is a fascinating description of the practice of crime in 19th century America.
This book's main flaws are 1) it often reads like advertising or even propaganda for the abilities of the Pinkerton agency to thwart crime and protect moneyed interests, and 2) the prose is wordy and overwrought, even by 19th century standards.
There is more than enough interesting material in here to excuse both of those flaws. As another Goodreads reviewer notes, Pinkerton (or his ghostwriter) tends to write that many of the criminals in this book were geniuses, or somehow super-criminals. Actually, many of them were, which is why they're included in this volume. If the book described the cat-and-mouse game between smart, resourceful detectives and crude, run-of-the-mill criminals, it wouldn't be too interesting.
There's an entire chapter on "burglars," which in this book refers specifically to those who crack bank safes (as opposed to typical house burglars). Of the safe-breaker, Pinkerton says:
Pinkerton goes on to say:
The "safe-openers" of the 19th century were akin to the hackers of the 21st century. They had to outwit the most sophisticated security designs of the cleverest minds of the era. But unlike today's hackers, they had to do their work onsite, in the dark, almost always between the bank's closing on Saturday evening and when its reopening on Monday morning.
0
Like today's best hackers, the safe-openers worked with a set of specially-made tools, often of ingenious design, and many of which they built by hand specifically for the task. The best of these criminals carefully studied safe manufacture and design, knowing that they could defeat the security of the safe only by attacking it at its weakest point. Pinkerton provides illustrations and descriptions of some of these tools, and describes how they were used in specific heists.
A number of bank burglaries described in the book depend less on cleverness than on perseverance. Sometimes burglars, like hackers, ignored the obvious point of attack and found a way into the vault that no one would have ever anticipated. (If you've seen the film Sexy Beast, you'll have an idea of how this type of burglary works. It depends on tremendous audacity, patience, and perseverance.)
The book also contains a long chapter on counterfeiting, which describes a number of fascinating characters. Counterfeiters are by nature patient, subtle, wily, wary, detail oriented, and highly skilled. Compared with common thieves, who rip people off one at a time, counterfeiters operate on a huge scale, and by the time anyone recognizes that false currency is in circulation, the perpetrators are gone.
Thirty Years a Detective is most interesting as a description of how crime was practiced in the 19th century, and how it was detected. In this book, as in The Expressman and the Detective, Pinkerton shows that there is a fine line between the top-notch detective and the top-notch criminal. Both are deceptive and elusive. Both employ similar tactics to case their targets. Both are preoccupied with the questions "How does one deceive an honest citizen?" and "What weaknesses in the system can I exploit for gain?"
The criminal works forward from these questions to engineer his crime. The detective works backward to figure out what was done, how, and by whom. The criminal merely has to commit the act. The detective has the much tougher job of proving it was done, who did it, and how. In this book and in others, Pinkerton admires and laments the misapplied genius of his toughest adversaries, and it really is an interesting read.
This book's main flaws are 1) it often reads like advertising or even propaganda for the abilities of the Pinkerton agency to thwart crime and protect moneyed interests, and 2) the prose is wordy and overwrought, even by 19th century standards.
There is more than enough interesting material in here to excuse both of those flaws. As another Goodreads reviewer notes, Pinkerton (or his ghostwriter) tends to write that many of the criminals in this book were geniuses, or somehow super-criminals. Actually, many of them were, which is why they're included in this volume. If the book described the cat-and-mouse game between smart, resourceful detectives and crude, run-of-the-mill criminals, it wouldn't be too interesting.
There's an entire chapter on "burglars," which in this book refers specifically to those who crack bank safes (as opposed to typical house burglars). Of the safe-breaker, Pinkerton says:
...experience has demonstrated beyond question that he is possessed of more than ordinary mechanical knowledge, and that his energy and patience are phenomenal. Nor is there any reason why this should not be so. The burglar is trained to his vocation by the hardest discipline known to man.
Pinkerton goes on to say:
So exceedingly proficient have many of them become in the art of safe-opening, that I have known of more than one instance where burglars have been taken from their prison cells to open safes and vaults whose owners have forgotten the complicated combinations...
The "safe-openers" of the 19th century were akin to the hackers of the 21st century. They had to outwit the most sophisticated security designs of the cleverest minds of the era. But unlike today's hackers, they had to do their work onsite, in the dark, almost always between the bank's closing on Saturday evening and when its reopening on Monday morning.
0
Like today's best hackers, the safe-openers worked with a set of specially-made tools, often of ingenious design, and many of which they built by hand specifically for the task. The best of these criminals carefully studied safe manufacture and design, knowing that they could defeat the security of the safe only by attacking it at its weakest point. Pinkerton provides illustrations and descriptions of some of these tools, and describes how they were used in specific heists.
A number of bank burglaries described in the book depend less on cleverness than on perseverance. Sometimes burglars, like hackers, ignored the obvious point of attack and found a way into the vault that no one would have ever anticipated. (If you've seen the film Sexy Beast, you'll have an idea of how this type of burglary works. It depends on tremendous audacity, patience, and perseverance.)
The book also contains a long chapter on counterfeiting, which describes a number of fascinating characters. Counterfeiters are by nature patient, subtle, wily, wary, detail oriented, and highly skilled. Compared with common thieves, who rip people off one at a time, counterfeiters operate on a huge scale, and by the time anyone recognizes that false currency is in circulation, the perpetrators are gone.
Thirty Years a Detective is most interesting as a description of how crime was practiced in the 19th century, and how it was detected. In this book, as in The Expressman and the Detective, Pinkerton shows that there is a fine line between the top-notch detective and the top-notch criminal. Both are deceptive and elusive. Both employ similar tactics to case their targets. Both are preoccupied with the questions "How does one deceive an honest citizen?" and "What weaknesses in the system can I exploit for gain?"
The criminal works forward from these questions to engineer his crime. The detective works backward to figure out what was done, how, and by whom. The criminal merely has to commit the act. The detective has the much tougher job of proving it was done, who did it, and how. In this book and in others, Pinkerton admires and laments the misapplied genius of his toughest adversaries, and it really is an interesting read.
April 26, 2019
Absolutely loved this book.
What an amazing journey into the worlds first Detective's mind.
What an amazing journey into the worlds first Detective's mind.
February 17, 2009
A fascinating look at the crimes and criminals of the 19th century America. A very stark llok a the innovative detective work needed to bring the perpetrators to justice.
February 21, 2014
It was a really dry read but the time period and seriousness of the author excuse that. I need to get a book about the Pinkerton agency next.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews