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

From Edgar Award finalist James Polchin comes a thrilling examination of the murder that captivated Jazz Age America, with echoes of the decadence and violence of The Great Gatsby

On the morning of 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?

For sixteen months, 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. Famous figures like Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and F. Scott Fitzgerald weighed in. As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring the callous 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.

Author: James Polchin
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Published: 06/11/2024
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
ISBN: 9781640096004


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2024
Publishers Weekly 04/22/2024

About the Author
JAMES POLCHIN, Ph.D., is the author of Indecent Advances, a finalist for the Edgar Award. He has taught at the Princeton Writing Program, the Parsons School of Design, the New School for Public Engagement, and the Creative Nonfiction foundation. His writing has appeared in several places, including The New Inquiry, Lambda Literary, Brevity, and the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, where he is a contributing writer. A Clinical Professor at New York University, he lives in New York City with his husband, the photographer Greg Salvatori, and a Labrador named Albert.