Margalit Fox (Conan Doyle for the Defense; The Riddle of the Labyrinth) brings a lively storytelling style and a flair for conveying personalities to a history that's stranger than fiction with The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss.
" 'You are caught this time, and the best thing that you can do is to make a clean breast of it,' one of the Pinkertons... advised Mrs. Mandelbaum as she was led away. In reply, Fredericka Mandelbaum--upright widow, philanthropic synagogue-goer, doting mother of four, and boss of the country's most notorious crime syndicate--whirled and punched him in the face." To the modern mind, attuned to Scarface-style organized crime, Mandelbaum was an unlikely candidate for her role: Jewish, female, an immigrant, penniless upon her arrival in the United States in the mid-1800s. But through shrewd business practices and motivated by her desire for her family's survival and comfort, the woman known as Ma, Mother, and Marm Mandelbaum established what would become a multi-million-dollar empire. She backed her staff of shoplifters, pickpockets, and bank burglars with training, supplies, project funding, bail money, and lodging--indeed, mothering them while setting a standard for criminal organization, including a highly specialized school for safebreakers.
Fox successfully tells this story by letting colorful characters stand out. "About six feet tall and of Falstaffian girth (she was said to have weighed between 250 and 300 pounds), pouchy-faced, apple-cheeked and beetle-browed, [Mandelbaum] resembled the product of a congenial liaison between a dumpling and a mountain." She is pursued less by the New York police departments (multiple, corrupt, and at odds with one another) and more by the detectives of the nascent Pinkerton Agency who were hired to bring her down in a changing world. Both police and Pinkertons provide memorable characters to boot, on top of the regular and freelance lawbreakers Mandelbaum employed. Fox has a sharp eye for humor: "At the interment, it was reported afterward, some mourners deftly picked the pockets of others. Whether they did so in tribute to their fallen leader or simply from occupational reflex is unreported." And she sets this wild narrative in the context of its time, Gilded Age America, aglitter and crooked and facing massive economic and social change. The world of Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York both provided the long shot for a Jewish matron, and punished her for her nerve.
With copious notes and research, Fox offers a tale as madcap and thrilling as it is illustrative of American history and culture. The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum is riveting for fans of both history and entertaining storytelling. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia
Shelf Talker: In the late 1800s, a female crime boss ruled New York City, as colorfully detailed in this exhilarating narrative history.