Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America

by James Polchin, Malcolm Hillgartner (Read by)

Overview

On May 16, 1922, a young man's body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of "shadow men," blackmailers who extorted their victims' moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the investigation: What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder?

The media fueled a firestorm of speculation. Unscrupulous criminal attorneys, fame-seeking chorus girls, con artists, and misogynistic millionaires harnessed the power of the press to shape public perception. New York governor and future presidential candidate Al Smith and editor of the Daily News Joseph Medill Patterson leveraged the investigation to further professional ambitions. As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring Ward to justice, America watched enraptured.

Capturing the extraordinary twists and turns of the case, Shadow Men conjures the excess and contradictions of the Jazz Age and reveals the true-crime origins of the media-led voyeurism that reverberates through contemporary life. It's a story of privilege and power that lays bare the social inequity that continues to influence our system of justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798228008670
Publisher:	Tantor
Publication date:	11/05/2024
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Polchin is a writer, professor, and cultural historian. His book Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall was an Edgar Award finalist, Macavity Award Nominee, and named one of the Best True Crime Books of the Year by CrimeReads. His writing has appeared in Slate, TIME, Huffington Post UK, CrimeReads, Paris Review, Rolling Stone, NewNextNow, and the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. He is a clinical professor at New York University, and has previously taught at the Princeton Writing Program, the Parsons School of Design, the New School, and the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. He lives in New York with his husband, the photographer Greg Salvatori, and a Labrador named Albert.

Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. Named an AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 250 audiobooks.

Editorial Reviews

04/22/2024

Polchin (Indecent Advances) combines a novelist’s gift for narrative and a journalist’s eye for detail in this riveting work of true crime. In 1922, the body of 19-year-old Clarence Peters was found on the side of a road in Westchester County, N.Y. The bullet that killed Peters only pierced his shirt, not his outer garments, leading police to believe that the body had been moved from where the murder occurred. Days afterward, New Rochelle police commissioner Walter Ward came forward to confess, claiming he acted in self-defense. According to Ward’s testimony, he was being blackmailed by Peters’s gang, to whom he’d already paid $30,000, and when Peters pointed a pistol at him during a confrontation, Ward wrested the weapon away, and fired it to save his life. Doubts about his account were widespread, and Polchin packs the narrative with cliffhangers as he takes readers through the case’s often-shocking twists, including the involvement of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had become a devout spiritualist and claimed to be able to commune with Peters’s spirit. It’s an entertaining account of an obscure yet fascinating crime. Agent: Deirdre Mullane, Mullane Literary Assoc. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"The criminal probe at the center of Shadow Men is absorbing." —The Wall Street Journal, Barbara Spindel

"Polchin knows the era, and brings to his account a wealth of colorful supporting detail . . . With its layers of taboos and public spectacle, the case feels, a century later, as relevant as ever." —Marisa Meltzer, The New York Times Book Review

“Polchin’s engrossing account of this forgotten cause célèbre exposes how easily wealth, power, and privilege can tip the scales of justice.” —Dean Jobb, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

"Shadow Men cements his place in the new true crime canon." —Molly Odintz, CrimeReads

"Polchin combines a novelist’s gift for narrative and a journalist’s eye for detail in this riveting work of true crime . . . It’s an entertaining account of an obscure yet fascinating crime." —Publishers Weekly

"This true crime book slowly reveals the underworlds of the 1920s, including what being queer in the Jazz Age was like." —Danika Ellis, Book Riot

"Readers today will—as were readers in the 1920s—be confounded by the crime's lack of resolution, which presages modern-day issues of money, political power, gambling, homophobia, media coverage, and accountability—or lack thereof—in America." —Booklist

"A sensational crime provokes thought about class privilege and injustice in the American legal system." —Kirkus Reviews

"Shadow Men unwinds a complex murder investigation about the moral decadence of the Jazz Age, the façade of privileged class mores, and the power of William Randolph Hearst’s empire of yellow journalism to shape public perception. Polchin brilliantly balances historical detail and forward momentum in a true crime tale that exposes the great inequities in our justice system, the shadows of which still loom today." —John Copenhaver, award-winning author of Hall of Mirrors

"James Polchin's triumphant Shadow Men weaves a Jazz Age whodunit out of Hitchcock, a richly laden escapade of gentlemen's intrigue and the roughest of rough trade blackmail. This devilishly plotted potboiler exposes a champagne underworld of confidence men, blowoffs and suckers in a 1920s America that only gets queerer and queerer." ––Robert W. Fieseler, Author of the Edgar Award Winner Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

From the Publisher

2024-01-19
The still-unsolved mysteries surrounding a Jazz Age murder offer a fascinating window into class, privilege, media influence, and criminal justice.

In 1922, the body of Clarence Peters, a 19-year-old "penniless sailor" dishonorably discharged from the Navy for stealing, was discovered by the side of a suburban road with a bullet through his chest. Days later, Walter Ward, the scion of a successful bakery empire, confessed to the shooting. He claimed self-defense, arguing that Peters was one of a gang of blackmailers, "shadow men," who were pursuing him. However, his lurid confession—“as one newspaper noted, the entire tale of blackmail and murder read ‘like a thriller in a dime store novel’”—left out the motive for the alleged blackmail operation. The murder became a local sensation and then a headline story in the national press. Polchin’s engaging tale unfolds throughout New York City, in Gatsby-worthy mansions, impoverished tenements, racetracks, underworld nightspots, and pool halls. Peters hung around Bryant Park, where sailors and soldiers met up with wealthy men willing to pay for sexual favors. Had Ward been entangled in a "muzzle" scheme, leading to blackmail attempts? “Those who have explored the case have usually concluded that queer sexual blackmail was at the heart of the murder,” writes Polchin, and he seems to agree with those conclusions. His previous book, Indecent Advances, concerned the cold-blooded killings of gay men in 20th-century America. If the author doesn’t definitively prove that sexual relations between Peters and Ward drove the latter to murder, neither did the courts. Regardless, Polchin’s investigation yields a compelling social history that makes clear the power of the press, wealth, political clout, and influence in determining legal outcomes and obfuscating the heart of scandalous affairs.

A sensational crime provokes thought about class privilege and injustice in the American legal system.

Kirkus Reviews