Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero

As leader of an unprecedented crime-busting squad, twenty-eight-year-old Eliot Ness won fame for enforcing Prohibition and taking on notorious mobster Al Capone. But the Untouchables’ daring raids were only the beginning of Ness’s unlikely story. Eliot Ness is famous from tv shows and movies, but neither Robert Stack nor Kevin Costner played anything like the real Eliot Ness. In reality, he had little to do with Al Capone but much to do with pioneering forensics and procedures that are still in use today. Nor does author Douglas Perry hesitate to show us the flaws in his titular hero: The so-called Untouchables often took bribes, Ness cheated on multiple wives and drank heavily, dying at 55. You'll also get a lot of inside baseball here about police work, serial killers, political corruption, and the ins and outs of the US "justice" system.

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