Publishers Weekly
07/13/2015
Urschel, the executive director of the National Law Enforcement Museum, overcomes some early stumbles to produce a true crime page-turner about George “Machine Gun” Kelly, a legendary Depression-era criminal man who is remembered—unjustifiably, according to the author—as “one of the most notorious hoodlums who terrorized the Midwest.” The repercussions of Kelly’s kidnapping of Oklahoma oilman Charles Urschel (not a relative of the author) in 1933 validate the bold claim made in the book’s subtitle. The author effectively traces how Charles Urschel’s wife’s immediate call to a newly established federal hotline led to young J. Edgar Hoover’s most successful investigation, and the birth of the FBI. Urschel makes clear how much of that success in the search for Kelly and his cohorts was due to the victim’s incredible sangfroid while a captive and his remarkable memory for details, including the distances between buildings on the farm where he was held. There are some drawbacks—an initial tendency to dramatize events, the absence of detailed sourcing of information—but those who enjoyed Bryan Burroughs’s more comprehensive Public Enemies (2004) will still find this focus on one colorful character enjoyable. Agent: Wayne Kabak, WSK Management. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"The Year of Fear, Joe Urschel's entertaining new history of 1933, takes off, in a wheel-spinning flurry of detail that brings the era to life." - USA Today
author of The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot t Daniel Stashower
A notorious gangster, a dramatic kidnapping and a splashy, page-one trial. In Joseph Urschel's hands it adds up to a gripping, fast-paced portrait of America at the crossroads of a lawless "year of fear." The Year of Fear aims high and -- much like "Machine Gun" Kelly himself -- Urschel hits the target.
Library Journal
★ 07/01/2015
Urschel (executive director, National Law Enforcement Museum) describes how J. Edgar Hoover built what later became the FBI. In 1933, Hoover was desperate to find a case that would propel his agency into the limelight, but the only authority it had jurisdiction over was kidnapping. On the morning of July 22, 1933, he received a call from Berenice Urschel (no relation to the author) saying that her husband, Charles, had been abducted. Hoover took control of this investigation and had his agents working on it 24/7. Charles Urschel, a wealthy oil man, was able to pay attention to his surroundings despite being blindfolded and later provided Hoover with information. It turned out that George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his wife, Kathryn, were the leaders of ordeal. In three months, Hoover's agents traveled 20,000 miles through 16 states and captured and convicted the perpetrators, with six of nine defendants given life sentences. Hoover was also instrumental in the construction of Alcatraz, which was where Kelly was imprisoned for 18 years. VERDICT For those interested in the early years of the FBI and gangsters, this is the book to read. Just as this crime held the interest of the people on a daily basis in 1933 through the newspapers and radios, today's readers will be completely absorbed.—Michael Sawyer, Pine Bluff, AR
Kirkus Reviews
2015-06-23
The colorful story of George "Machine Gun" Kelly (1895-1954), a Depression-era kidnapping, and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men. In 1933, the year after the famous Lindbergh baby kidnapping, oilman Charles Urschel (no relation to the author) was abducted from his Oklahoma home and held for nine days. After Urschel's release in exchange for a $200,000 ransom, the kidnapping turned into "a national melodrama that…played out over the nation's radio networks and on the pages of its newspapers." The notorious Kelly and his gangster-moll wife, Kathryn, were pursued in a frantic manhunt coordinated by the ambitious Hoover, who, at 36, had just become head of the U.S. Department of Justice's new Bureau of Investigation. In this action-packed debut, author Urschel, the former managing editor of USA Today who now directs the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, D.C., offers a vivid re-creation of the massive, multistate manhunt that led to the capture and imprisonment of America's "new Public Enemy Number One." Sometimes overly detailed and containing liberal quotations from contemporary newspaper accounts, with prose matching its tough-guy, B-movie aura ("She snapped the waistband closed with a definite click, like the sound of a .38 slug sliding into its chamber"), the book captures the rampant criminality of the 1930s and the public's yearning for a return to law and order. The author packs the pages with shootouts, bank robbers, and corrupt cops. With the passage of the Lindbergh law, making it a federal felony to take a kidnapping victim across state lines, the self-promoting Hoover was poised to stop Kelly and show that his agents had the makings of a federal police force. His bureau became the FBI in 1935. An entertaining slice of the fabled (and familiar) gangster epoch.
