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 sometimes 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, hardworking, 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!
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