Books: G-Man

PERSONS IN HIDING—J. Edgar Hoover —Little, Brown ($3.50).

At G-Man headquarters in Washington, D. C. one day last week Director J. Edgar Hoover greeted 25 leading booksellers of New York. Philadelphia and Boston, treated them to an impressive display of G-Man machine-gunnery, jujitsu. a sham battle with gangsters on the “raiding” field nearby. Back on the job, his bookseller-guests started a strong sales campaign on behalf of J. Edgar Hoover’s new book, Persons in Hiding.

G-Man Hoover takes no stock in sociologists who attribute crime to poverty. He aims ”to tell the truth about these rats [Dillinger, the Barker-Karpis gang, Machine-gun Kelly, other famed gangsters rounded up by G-Men] . . . their dirty, filthy diseased women . . . the slimy, silly or sob-sister convict lovers who let them out on sentimental or illy-advised paroles.” The book generally succeeds in its purpose: “to create apprehension.” G-Man Hoover dislikes criminals. He even accuses Karpis, a bug on fishing, of using dirty means to get fish to bite.