Discover the truth about the Black Hand, as featured inPeaky Blinders

Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point.

Standing between the American public and the Black Hands lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the Italian Sherlock Holmes, he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hands activities spread far beyond New Yorks borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the countrys anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosinos quest to root out the source of the Black Hands power would take him all the way to Sicilybut at a terrible cost.

Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era,The Black Handis fast-paced narrative history at its very best.

Stephan Talty is the award-winning author ofAgent Garbo,Empire of Blue Water, and other best-selling works of narrative nonfiction. His books have been made into two films, the Oscar-winningCaptain PhillipsandGranite Mountain. Hes also the author of two psychological thrillers, including theNew York Timesbest-sellerBlack Irish, set in his hometown of Buffalo, NY.