Pinkerton

To keep the peace in the coal mines, the Pinkerton agency goes to war The Civil War is over, and the Union is rebuilding using the power of coal-black rock dug from deep beneath the Pennsylvania earth by men from all over the globe who are seeking their fortune in America. In the 1870s, the miners are unionizing to fight for better working conditions, but within their ranks lurks a secret society whose aim is not so pure. It calls itself the Mollie Maguires, and its adherents are ready to kill to get what they want. Fearing a bloodbath, the head of one of the coal-mining firms reaches out to Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous detective agency, and begs him to break up the sinister ring. Pinkerton sends James McParlan undercover among the miners, the first soldier in a three-year battle against the radicals that will change the face of American labor forever. This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) was the world's first private detective. Immigrating to Chicago from Glasgow, Scotland, he discovered a gang of counterfeiters and assisted in their capture. He became deputy sheriff of Kane County, then Cook County, resigning from the police to form the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1852. The Pinkerton logo, the All-Seeing Eye, inspired the phrase "Private Eye".

Pinkerton sends an agent to catch a thief on the Southern railway In the build-up to the Civil War, Montgomery is a thriving town-a local capital grown rich on cotton and the railroad. When $10,000 disappears from the railroad, suspicion falls on a clerk named Maroney, an upstanding citizen whose only vice is a love of horseracing. The railroad hires the South's best detectives to tail Maroney, looking for a clue as to where the money has gone, but they find nothing. So they turn to the only man who can help: Allan Pinkerton. The head of the nation's first modern detective agency, Pinkerton invented undercover detective work, and he sends his finest agent, Mr. Porter, to infiltrate the high society of the old South. Whether Maroney is the culprit or merely a scapegoat, Porter will get to the truth. Allan Pinkerton never rests until justice is served. This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The mental characteristics of Allan Pinkerton were judgment as to facts, knowledge of men, the ability to concentrate his faculties on one subject, and the persistent power of will. A mysterious problem of crime, against which his life was devoted, presented to his thought, was solved almost in an instant, and seemingly by his intuitions. With half-closed eyes he saw the scene in which the wrong was done, read every movement of the criminals, and reached invariably the correct conclusion as to their conduct and guilt.

The following pages narrate a story of detective experience, which, in many respects, is alike peculiar and interesting, and one which evinces in a marked degree the correctness of one of the cardinal principles of my detective system, viz.: "That crime can and must be detected by the pure and honest heart obtaining a controlling power over that of the criminal."