Egan's Rats

Far too many organized crime books are narrowly focused on New York and Chicago, as if nothing of any consequence ever happened in the underworlds of other cities. St Louis has a gangster past just as colorful and violent and indeed supplied many of the killers who made the Twenties roar in other urban battlegrounds around the nation. Many books mention Egan's Rats as the premier St. Louis gang but provide little and usually erroneous detail. Dan Waugh, a native St. Louisan, a fantastic researcher, and a wonderful writer, has corrected this with an incredibly in-depth and entertaining history of the gang. Stretching from its 1890s roots as saloon toughs in the employ of politician "Snake" Kinney right on through the bloody Prohibition gang wars and the million-dollar mail robberies that brought the gang down, and the exodus of ex-Rats to the gang war scenes of New York, Detroit, and Chicago, it's an action-packed history that's long overdue.