THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK

Crimes and misdemeanors animate a spirited history.

Attracted once again to sin and subversion, Abbott (Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, 2014, etc.) sets her lively new tale during Prohibition, when George Remus, a teetotaling lawyer–turned-bootlegger, amassed an empire so large that even he could not keep count of the distilleries and drug companies—liquor could be sold legally with a doctor’s prescription—that yielded his fortune. Deposits to his savings accounts “averaged $50,000 a day, in an era when the average salary was $1,400 a year,” Abbott reveals. “The money came in so fast that Remus couldn’t deposit it all, forcing him to carry as much as $100,000 in his pockets at any given time.” He indulged in real estate, automobiles, and antiques, and his attractive young wife shopped with abandon, buying items such as solid gold service plates, diamonds, and furs. The family’s mansion was decorated with Persian rugs, European oil paintings, and, in the parlor, a solid gold piano. Their parties were notoriously extravagant: One New Year’s Eve, guests received diamonds and gold as party favors. With politicians, legislators, city police, and Prohibition officers taking bribes of cash and liquor, Remus felt confidently above the law. However, he did not account for the dogged perseverance of Mabel Walker Willebrandt, an ambitious Department of Justice prosecutor determined to enforce the 18th Amendment. With the help of a team of agents known as Mabelmen, she succeeded, landing Remus in jail, where, at one point, he had a maid to cook and serve meals for him, fellow prisoners, and select visitors. Remus would be a colorful subject just on the basis of his flagrant bootlegging, but his malfeasance came to include something much more serious: murder. Drawing on government files, archives, newspaper articles, and trial transcripts—one of which was more than 5,000 pages long—Abbott recounts in tense, vivid detail Remus’ entanglement in intrigue, betrayal, madness, and violence.

An entertaining tale ripped from the headlines of Jazz Age America.