THE PINKERTONS: THE DETECTIVE DYNASTY THAT MADE HISTORY by James D. Horan. 564 pages. Crown. $7.95.
From Cotton Mather to J. Edgar Hoover, America's best vice fighters have displayed an unappeasable fervor for coming to grips with evil that might be described as a Moby Dick complex. Allan Pinkerton and his sons William and Robert—founder and scions of a family whose name is synonymous with sleuthing—are no exceptions. Toward the criminals they pursued for twelve decades, from Jesse James to Willie ("The Actor") Sutton, the Pinkertons seemed to direct the same obsessive passions...
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