The Big Policeman: The Rise and Fall of America's First, Most Ruthless, and Greatest Detective
The subtitle’s superlatives refer to Thomas Byrnes, a New York City law enforcer whose career peaked in the 1890s as superintendent of the police force. Impressed by Byrnes’ ascent, which began with street-patrol courageousness in the city’s 1863 antidraft, antiblack riots, Conway proceeds to Byrnes’ successes as a detective, which form the core of the biography. Going case-by-case, including a stripped-down version of an 1878 bank caper he wrote a full-fledged book about (The King of Heists, 2009), Conway combines narrative with explanation of Byrnes’ methods of investigation and interrogation. Conway holds that these distinguish Byrnes as a pioneer in systematic techniques, such as compilation of a criminal database and rudimentary analysis of ballistics and blood. Conway also highlights how Byrnes closed cases in those pre-Miranda days by extracting confessions from suspects by deception, bullying, and/or beating. Creating period atmosphere by quoting extensively from newspaper accounts of the sensational crimes Byrnes solved, Conway portrays his subject’s cleverness and excesses with a flawed-hero flavor that should draw in true-crime fans. --Gilbert Taylor