Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago

One of the best, and best researched, true crime narratives published in a long time, Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz’s Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago is a thrilling account of the efforts by Treasury Prohibition Unit agent Ness and his colleagues (and sometime rivals), “The Untouchables”, to bring down legendary gangster Capone. The authors thoroughly detail how Capone rose to power, first in New York, then Chicago, becoming the head of “The Outfit”, where he ran various bootlegging operations during the Prohibition period, noting how he and Ness, both first generation sons of immigrants, sought the American Dream. But Capone’s pursuit of that dream meant crushing anything -and anybody- in his way, no matter how bloody the results. Ness, also ambitious, but believing in common decency and respect for his fellow beings, manages to eventually derail Capone. But the bloody battle between organized crime and law enforcement in Chicago would still continue, long after Capone was finally put away for tax evasion in 1931.Collins and Schwartz provide a whole lot of meticulous documentation and details, including court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and police reports, among other sources, in depicting the dual stories of their two subjects, in the process bursting many previously held falsehoods about both. The book’s Introduction even notes how previous histories and biographies stressed the false portrait of honest, hard working and resourceful Ness as an egocentric and headline grabbing glory hound, while glorifying the evil and perfidious Capone. Those previously inaccurate depictions are pretty much debunked in this book.There’s lots of good stuff here, including how Ness’ “Untouchables” unit broke up various Capone breweries, often risking their lives; background on the infamous 1929 “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”; the overtly political efforts to prosecute Capone (then President Herbert Hoover especially doesn’t come off well here) that almost backfired; and implications that some of Capone’s own men (including the equally infamous Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, referred here under his actual real surname “Nitto”) conspired to bring him down because he was bad for business! Scarface and the Untouchable is riveting from start to finish! Definitely check it out!

Full disclosure: I'm about halfway through this book and came back to re-read the other reviews to see if I'm missing something. At times the writing is engaging and meets the "history as page turner" description. At other times it's embarrassingly bad. I almost never start a book and put it down. I've done that twice in the last 24 hours and then picked it right back up.Two examples: "On June 10, a judge heard the prosecution's pathetic case as to why Capone should be denied access to his own home. Seemed guests had been served alcohol--not a crime under Prohibition. Another prosecution witness, the president of a major Miami department store (who'd apparently attended the recent banquet), said he too had seen alcohol served. Also, some of the guests were not entirely sober. Imagine!" (p. 255). I'd expect this quality of writing from the 113th chapter of a Dan Brown novel but not from a serious history.Next: "The man he knew as the 'head of the dog track' was Edgar Joseph O'Hare, a fast-talking, clean living, lawyer from St. Louis." The next page and a half detail how O'Hare is a corrupt criminal. Clean living? (p. 266-267).If you can overlook the, at times, sensational and sloppy writing "Scarface and the Untouchable" is an entertaining and well researched biography of Ness and Capone. I'm just not sure that I can finish it. Imagine!

I have seen other biographies of Eliot Ness, most of them consisting of "revisionist" history seeking to discredit rather than examine the Prohibition agent's career. At least one of them, which I will not name, has a bibliography which consists of a couple pages of questionable secondary sources, some of which I know to be of little reliability, and uses those sources to tear down Mr. Ness in a manner that is repugnantly self-serving. Other books on the broader subject of the history of Prohibition and the organized crime that grew out of it either dismiss Ness with a short paragraph, or ignore him altogether.Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago is the book I have waited for, having been fascinated by the story of Eliot Ness and Al Capone since I was 12 years old, watching the 1959-1963 series on television. Most of what I have found on the subject in the intervening decades has not been satisfying.This book by mystery writer Max Allan Collins and historian A. Brad Schwartz, is satisfying. It is meticulously-documented, using many original sources. The extensive endnotes testify to the quality of the careful research the authors have provided for us. This book examines the story and the interactions of both men in depth, with facts that debunk much of the mythology that has grown up around both. The authors' analysis of the implications inherent in Capone's criminal activity and in Ness's law enforcement efforts against it, and of the larger society in which both existed and contended, is the most cogent, deeply-sourced I have yet seen on this subject.The writing is superb, telling a story as gripping as any fictional thriller. This is the book that sets the record straight.

There have been a lot of different versions of the Al-Capone-versus-Eliot-Ness story. I'm old enough to have watched the Robert Stack version on television as it was produced by Desilu! I've been interested in this story ever since.With this offering, authors Collins and Schwartz prove their chops as researchers and as writers. The documentary detail of this book is amazing, but it's also written with a "true crime" voice that is very entertaining.

great read

Haven't read the book yet but item was damaged when received slightly disappointed.