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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Few authors write as colorfully and compellingly about the past as Karen Abbott, particularly when bad behavior is involved. In The Ghosts of Eden Park, we meet the audacious, larger-than-life ‘King of the Bootleggers,’ George Remus, and the equally fascinating women who will seal his fate. Sex and greed, corruption and revenge, oceans of illegal booze—Abbott’s action-packed, riveting tale has it all.”—Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin

“Karen Abbott has long shown a formidable talent for rescuing Gothic stories from the noirish margins of American history. In The Ghosts of Eden Park, she's done it once again. Here is a high-proof narrative from the Age of Excess, populated with real-life gangsters and flapper girls, but also with plenty of surprising characters who cut against type. This Prohibition-era tale of trapdoors and false bottoms, of wicked pleasures and brilliant deceptions, springs to life on the page—and has Hollywood written all over it.”—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of In the Kingdom of Ice

“A gripping true-crime narrative . . . [Abbott’s] research is exemplary, and she lays out the details with a novelist’s deft touch. [F. Scott Fitzgerald] would undoubtedly have appreciated this heady cocktail of murder, intrigue and Jazz Age excess.”—The Washington Post

“Karen Abbott tells the story of Remus’ rise and fall with a novelist’s eye. . . . I was transfixed, not only by the incredible research that informed this compulsively readable book but also by what the story reveals about human nature, the interplay of brilliant and unpredictable individuals and the societies in which they live, and the way that greed, fame and lust can [corrupt]—and have [corrupted—] the motives of both lovers and enemies. If you are a fan of true crime, historical nonfiction and the Jazz Age, this is not a book to miss.”—BookPage (starred review)

“Karen Abbott's newest is a page-turner, teasing readers with its central mystery, and reaching its climactic final trial with a satisfying bang.”—NPR

“Engrossing . . . This real-life page-turner will appeal to fans of Erik Larson.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Kahler (the author of previous books, including Sin in the Second City [2008] and The Ghosts of Eden Park [2019], under the name Karen Abbott) has a gift for writing gripping histories that are both sensational and thoroughly documented. Possibly her wildest book yet.”—Booklist, starred review

“A spirited history . . . Abbott recounts in tense, vivid detail Remus’s entanglement in intrigue, betrayal, madness, and violence. An entertaining tale ripped from the headlines of Jazz Age America.”—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Abbot Kahler (formerly known as Karen Abbott) is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

All the Rope He Wants

The house seemed out of a Bavarian fairy tale, rambling and turreted, laced with gingerbread cornicing and columns arched like sharp, imperious brows. It was the finest house in Price Hill, the finest neighborhood in Cincinnati, perched high above the Ohio River and its basin of residents and commerce: the downtown business district, the black families in the West End, and the German immigrants in Over-the-Rhine, where Prohibition forced breweries to sell root beer in the hope of surviving the law. Already he envisioned what his “dream palace” would become. A Roman garden, a baseball field, a heated pool, a library stocked with books—presidential biographies, the epic poems of Homer and Milton, tomes of mythology and obscure science that would suggest the surprising depths of his mind. In this house he would once again become someone new, an updated and superior version of himself. In this house the world would come to know his name.

George Remus would be forty-four years old that November of 1920, and had spent the first half of his life gathering momentum for the second. He was the embodiment of the new decade, a harbinger of its grandest excesses and darkest illusions. He endeavored to become the best in the country at his chosen profession—a profession that could not have flourished so dramatically in any other era, nor become so swiftly obsolete. As America reinvented itself Remus would do the same, living in rabid service to his own creation, protecting it at all costs.

The primary facet of this creation, the fulcrum that would allow him to pivot and rise, was Augusta Imogene Remus, formerly Augusta Imogene Holmes. Imogene, as she preferred, was thirty-five, with dark hair and eyes and a voluptuous figure better suited to the bustles and billowing sleeves of decades past. They’d met five years earlier at his office in downtown Chicago, where Remus had been one of the city’s preeminent defense attorneys and Imogene a “dust girl,” sweeping the floors and tidying his desk.

She’d confided in him about her divorce, which plodded along painfully for years, as she and her husband separated ten times before finally going to court. Remus could commiserate. He, too, had suffered marital strife. Lillian—his wife and the mother of his teenaged daughter, Romola—once filed for divorce charging “cruelty,” “pure malice,” and a habit of “coming home early in the morning.” Lillian subsequently wished to reconcile, but their union remained tenuous.

Imogene saw her chance.

Remus accepted her as a client and promptly fell in love. Hoping to spark reciprocal feelings he told Imogene everything, sharing long-buried tales of his past, the quirks and compulsions that shaped him now. He recounted his first memory: the journey from Germany to Ellis Island in 1883, when he was six years old, traveling with two sisters and a mother so beleaguered she forgot the names of four other children who’d died. In America they reunited with Remus’s father, Franz (Anglicized to Frank) and settled in Chicago. Remus remembered his father coming home drunk from the corner saloon and evolving, week by week, into a “mean” and “abusive” alcoholic, and vowed that he himself would never drink a drop of alcohol.

When Frank developed rheumatism and could no longer work, Remus quit the eighth grade to take a job at his uncle’s pharmacy on the city’s West Side, earning $5 per week. As his father’s rages worsened Remus moved into the pharmacy, sleeping on a cot in the stock room, going for months at a time without seeing his parents and siblings. He called himself a “druggist’s devil boy,” and in this role experienced a shrewd and useful revelation: He could sell anything to anyone under any circumstance, no matter how outrageous his claims or unorthodox his delivery.

He bought the drug store from his uncle, and during his years in the business he peddled all manner of dubious concoctions: Remus’s Cathartic Compound, Remus’s Cathartic Pills, a Remus “complexion remedy” containing mercury, Remus’s Lydia Pinkham Compound (presumably Lydia’s own legendary cocktail, for the relief of menstrual pain, wasn’t sufficiently potent), and his specialty, Remus’s Nerve Tonic, consisting of fluid extract of celery, sodium bromide, rhubarb and a dash of a poisonous, hallucinogenic plant called henbane. Although he’d never finished his courses at the Chicago College of Pharmacy, he convinced his customers to call him “Doctor Remus.”

When he switched careers to law he brought this salesmanship to his practice, employing theatrics that became a vital component of his success. Poignant episodes from history dramatized Remus’s closing arguments; one judge was moved to tears by his description of Abraham Lincoln’s stint as a bartender. He used the courtroom as an arena, leaping and pacing and prowling the length of the jury box. During the cross-examination of his clients he tore at his remaining rim of hair, sobbing and howling with abandon. Detractors derided him with a nickname, “The Weeping, Crying Remus,” but admirers coined one of their own: “The Napoleon of the Chicago Bar.”

In one famous case, Remus defended a husband accused of poisoning his wife. Throughout the trial he kept the poison in question on his table, in full view of the jury. During his closing argument Remus raised the bottle aloft and swiped it slowly across the air, so that the jury got a clear look of the skull and crossbones on its label.

“There has been a lot of talk of poison in this case,” he said. “But it is a lot of piffle. Look!”

As the jury gasped, he swallowed the poison and continued with his closing argument, aware that they all expected him to drop dead. When he didn’t, the jury returned with an acquittal. Only later did Remus reveal his trick: drawing on his pharmaceutical background, he first drank an elixir that neutralized the poison.

---

In this same way he sold himself to Imogene Holmes. Only he could provide the level of care and attention she so obviously deserved. He would handle her divorce and she needn’t worry about his fee; in fact, she could quit her job as a dust girl and money would be no concern. He would pay the rent on her apartment in Evanston, north of Chicago, and spend more time there than he did at home with his wife. He would give Imogene allowance money, $100 checks to spend as she wished. He would rescue her from “the gutter” and “make a lady out of her.” He would adore her and be true to her. He would protect her and her 11-year-old daughter, Ruth, from all unsavory people and circumstances, a promise that was tested in the spring of 1919.

One evening, a local plumber knocked on Imogene’s door claiming he had found the girl’s watch, and wanted a $15 reward for its return. Imogene thought $5 sufficed. An argument ensued.

Remus had always enjoyed confrontation, physical or mental. His stout stature— five foot six and 205 pounds—belied his agility and strength. He boasted of his history as a competitive swimmer, and how he set an endurance record by spending nearly six hours in frigid Lake Michigan. During his stint as a pharmacist he once argued with a customer who complained that a liniment had scalded his chest; Remus dragged the man outside and settled the matter by slapping him in the face. When a group of women gathered at his drug store to protest his “poisonous potions,” Remus ran at them with a bottle of amonia and tossed its contents. As a lawyer he had a history of attacking opposing counsel, throwing punches over witness testimony and ending up in a tangle of limbs on the courtroom floor. His hubris was equaled only by a concern that someone, someday, might get the best of him.

Standing in Imogene’s doorway, Remus, wearing slippers, launched himself at the plumber, punched him in the eye, revamped his nose, knocked out a tooth and chased him onto the lawn.

The plumber pressed charges, and Remus represented himself.

“I acted in self-defense as any red-blooded man with a spark of chivalry would have acted,” he argued. “This ruffian of a plumber was disturbing a lady. He was rough housing, loud mouthed, irrelevant, and immaterial about the premises, and I only forcibly applied a perfectly good and legal writ of ejectment.”

After five minutes’ deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

His wife Lillian filed for divorce a second and final time. In her petition she once again accused Remus of cruelty, claiming that on several occasions he beat, punched, struck, choked, and kicked her. Remus agreed to a settlement reflective of his success: a lump sum of $50,000, $25 per week in alimony, and $30,000 in a trust for their daughter, Romola. He moved out of their home for good, allowing Imogene to defend him in the press.

“He is a perfect gentleman,” she insisted, “and anything his wife says to the contrary is false. The trouble with modern wives is this: They don’t know how to treat their husbands. A husband should be given all the rope he wants… he will never hang himself.”

It would be Lillian, however, who had the final word. She claimed to the press that Remus, on several occasions, had ended his affair with Imogene, ordering her to stay away from his office and home. But Imogene persisted, following him down Clark Street during the day and lurking outside their windows at night, flashing a gun and insisting that they were meant to be together.

---

With a new fiancé, home and stepdaughter-to-be, Remus once again sought to update his life, discarding any piece of his past that seemed ill-fit for his future. He included his career in this evaluation, and noticed that his docket had filled with a new type of defendant: men charged with violating the Volstead Act, recently passed to enforce the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol to, from, or within the United States. Remus considered the law to be unreasonable and nearly impossible to enforce, and his clients were proving him right, making astonishing profits from what he called “petty, hip-pocket bootlegging.” They paid retainers in cash right away, fanning the bills across his desk, and never complained about fines imposed by the court, no matter how steep. He noticed that their customers were the “so-called best people,” whose primary gripe in life was the difficulty in getting good whiskey. It occurred to him that this demand must be spreading across the country, and that if his clients—“men without any brains at all”—were succeeding, then he himself had “a chance to clean up.”

Seeking to launch a large-scale operation he scoured the Volstead Act, finding a loophole in Title II, Section 6: With a physician’s prescription, it was legal to buy and use liquor for “medicinal purposes”—a provision he deemed, in a customary flourish of language, “the greatest comedy, the greatest perversion of justice, that I have ever known of in any civilized country in the world.” A plan took shape in his mind. As a licensed pharmacist, he had the knowledge necessary to exploit the law on a national scale. As a criminal defense attorney, he understood well the mindset and machinations of the underworld. As a lifelong teetotaler, he could view the liquor business objectively. And as risk-taker, he craved the thrill and excitement of outwitting not only his competitors but also the federal government.

He devised his strategy, each step meticulously considered and potential hazards addressed:

• Close his Chicago law practice and move to Cincinnati, since 80 percent of the country’s pre-Prohibition bonded whiskey was stored within 300 miles of the city.
• Buy distilleries to gain possession of thousands of gallons of that whiskey.
• Acquire wholesale drug companies, always listing someone else as the owner.
• Under the guise of these drug companies, obtain withdrawal permits that would allow him to remove whiskey from his warehouses and, in theory, sell it on the medicinal market.
• Bribe state Prohibition directors to ignore abnormally large withdrawals.
• Organize a transportation company to provide for distribution, and arrange for his own employees to hijack his own trucks—thereby diverting all of that technically legal, curative whiskey into the illicit market at any price he named. He would, essentially, rob Remus to pay Remus.

He called this massive, unwieldy octopus of an enterprise “The Circle.”

---

Imogene had sold herself to Remus, too; she was malleable, receptive to his schemes, eager to mold herself into his ideal. She and her daughter Ruth would be his new family. She would keep his darkest secrets and uphold all of his lies. She would not tell anyone that Remus had always been terrified of ghosts. She would not divulge that his brother, Herman, had died in an insane asylum. She would not mention that Remus had never officially become an American citizen. She would never repeat the strange story behind his father’s death: Frank and Marie, Remus’s mother, had engaged in a barroom brawl, which culminated in a bash to his head with a blunt object; Frank died on the way to the hospital. To protect his mother, and to keep her from speaking indiscriminately to the coroner, Remus locked her in the attic for three days, until the inquest was over.

Remus chose to believe his past was safe with Imogene, and to entrust her with his future. En route to Cincinnati, on June 25, 1920, they stopped in Newport, Kentucky, to get married, with Ruth as their witness. Once in the Queen City he rented a suite at the Sinton Hotel, Cincinnati’s answer to New York’s Hotel Astor, featuring opera concerts, a Writing Room and a Louis XVI Candy Shop. They would live there until renovations were complete on the Price Hill mansion, which had once belonged to Henry Lackman, proprietor of a now-shuttered brewery. “We must buy the Lackman place,” Imogene had urged; it would be a monument to their new start and status, and a grandiose barrier to the past. Remus bought the home for $75,000, a record for a residential sale in Cincinnati, and a fraction of the amount he’d stashed in a local bank under an alias.

As a surprise for his new bride he put the deed in Imogene’s name, one of many decisions he’d come to regret.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MYL9T8N
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 6, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 12.1 MB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 520 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0451498649
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #344,813 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #185 in Criminal Law (Kindle Store)
- #269 in Crime & Criminal Biographies
- #559 in Biographies & Memoirs of Criminals
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Abbott Kahler
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Karen Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of SIN IN THE SECOND CITY, AMERICAN ROSE, LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDIER SPY, and, most recently, THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK, named one of the best books of August 2019 by Amazon.
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Customer reviews

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Customers say

Customers find this book a compelling read that reads like a novel, with well-researched content that sheds light on lesser-known aspects of history. The story is a fascinating tale of bootlegging, and one customer notes how the author paints a rich picture of personalities. Customers praise the writing style, with one describing it as a magnificent history written like a novel. They appreciate the author's masterful storytelling and consider her among their favorite authors of historical nonfiction.

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54 customers mention readability, 50 positive, 4 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a compelling and engaging narrative that reads like a novel.

...The author did a great job! Thank you for a great read!Read more

love local history? Interesting read. Added bonus....still many people around who actually know the stories first/second hand.Read more

This was a very interesting and compelling read about a little known part of Prohibition in the 1920s. It was written very well. I really enjoyed it.Read more

...If it wasn't true I would think this was fiction. Great, fun read.Read more

42 customers mention research, 40 positive, 2 negative

Customers praise the book's thorough research, noting that it sheds light on lesser-known aspects of history.

Really fact based and well researched but too long and too many details for a good story. Prohibition history book!Read more

...Murder and mayhem ensue. Very well researched and has some parallels to current day politics.Read more

...Exhaustively researched, yet written in such a way that the dialog crackles and the descriptions of places and characters are like watching a movie....Read more

...The keys to superb non-fiction writing are exhaustive research and attention to the details. You can’t cut corners....Read more

41 customers mention story, 37 positive, 4 negative

Customers find the book's story fascinating and well-researched, describing it as an excellent true crime narrative with hard-to-believe elements. One customer notes how it plunges readers into a gripping tale of bootlegging, while another highlights the interesting historical era that serves as its backdrop.

Great, gripping story! Wonderful read.Read more

...He was quite a character. It's a true story and well written....Read more

Interesting true story and characters, but narrative gets bogged downRead more

...It's such an amazing story and Abbott makes it a real page turner with her style. I recommend the book for sure.Read more

38 customers mention content, 36 positive, 2 negative

Customers enjoy the content of the book, with one customer specifically praising it as a well-crafted true crime narrative about George Reemus.

Great book, well structured and presented with complete documentation. George Remus is a legend in Cincinnati, especially in the Price Hill area....Read more

...If it wasn't true I would think this was fiction. Great, fun read.Read more

...It's history brought to life and it's the best book I've read in ten years.Read more

Excellent book! Very interesting storyRead more

18 customers mention writing style, 15 positive, 3 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, with one noting it reads like a novel while another describes it as superb non-fiction.

...He was quite a character. It's a true story and well written....Read more

...It was written very well. I really enjoyed it.Read more

...She's a beautiful writer who manages to take research and historical facts and bring it all to life....Read more

...It was written so well I could follow along and visualize in my head the streets, etc....Read more

16 customers mention character development, 15 positive, 1 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, with one customer noting how the author paints a rich picture of personalities, while another mentions how the descriptions of places and characters bring the story to life like watching a movie.

...Interesting character, eh?...Read more

...books read more like fictional novels with their fast pacing and unique characters. I appreciate her inclusion of actual dialogues and quotes....Read more

...Short crisp chapters keep it moving. Great, great character development. And one of the most amazing murder trials of American history. Buy it now....Read more

...'required' character types are included and the are all real and fascinating people....Read more

11 customers mention authorship, 11 positive, 0 negative

Customers praise the author's storytelling abilities, with one noting their faithfulness to historical facts.

Love this author and love this book!Read more

...example of "truth being stranger than fiction" and Abbott is a masterful storyteller. All the quotes come from letters, court documents, etc....Read more

...Love, money and booze never end well. The author did a great job! Thank you for a great read!Read more

...is another great book by Karen Abbott, who I believe is the best author out there....Read more

11 customers mention subject matter, 11 positive, 0 negative

Customers find the book's subject matter engaging, describing it as a fascinating blend of historical intrigue, with one customer noting how each chapter builds suspense.

...Most important, and what made it fascinating from cover to cover, is the prodigious research that has obviously gone into it....Read more

I tried hard to read this book, and it is well written, and the subject is interesting, but the author wrote this book in anticipation of getting a...Read more

Karen Abbott has a knack for finding the most interesting subjects for her non-fiction works! The Ghosts of Eden Park very much reads like a novel....Read more

I LOVE it when a nonfiction book is as compelling as fiction!...Read more

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IsolaBlue
What is a Villain? What is a Hero?
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2019
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

Most families have a bootlegger story that has been passed down from the Prohibition Era. Maybe someone's grandfather ran booze or the family's neighbor made booze. Or some relative knew where to buy booze (who didn't during that time period?) But, what a family story one would have if related to George Remus! Remus is either the villain or the hero of Karen Abbott's new book THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK. Depending on how an individual feels about prohibition, the law, business and enterprise, Remus may either horrify or delight. In most ways, it is the latter. Here is a man who flouted the rules, but with such style and conviction that the reader has to admire him rather than look askance. First there is the pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-strings background of the fellow: he dropped out of school in 8th grade to work at an uncle's pharmacy, and by the age of 19, he'd bought the pharmacy. Although he seemed to do well in the pharmaceutical business, he decided he wanted to pursue law instead. While practicing as a lawyer, Remus noticed that many were being charged with violations of the new Volstead Act. Rather than capitalizing on this specialty in law, he decided to study ways around the act in order to become a top-of-the-line bootlegger himself. Interesting character, eh?

Remus was VERY successful in his bootlegging ventures. He didn't drink alcohol, he had a good sense for business, and he kept finding and exploiting loopholes in the law. His empire grew large, and his lifestyle showed it. Some of the best descriptions in the book are of his lavish mansion in Cincinnati - 31 rooms total plus 10 acres of gardens, and a Greco-Roman swimming pool housed in its own building (and which cost him $175,000 to build in 1920's dollars.) In addition to the house, there were the furnishings, the art, and the extravagant parties thrown there. Of course, there was also Imogene. Imogene was Remus' second wife, and he loved, trusted, and coveted her. A woman younger than the famous bootlegger, she called him "Daddy," and was in the relationship for - what? Sometimes it is hard to tell. Imogene is a difficult character. The reader pictures her - all fashionable and perky - and wants to like her, but there is something about her words and actions that give way to distrust. No secrets are being given away - the reader knows from the start of the book that Remus killed her, BUT . . . one does not expect the up and down feelings that come with that. Is she a victim? Do we care? Who do we feel for? The dead woman or the rejected man? The relationship is so puzzling that it provides as much interest - if not more - than the bootlegging empire and eventual fall from grace. George Remus did not have the reputation of a good man. There was violence in his history, and he certainly comes across on the page as someone that no one would want to mess with. George always seemed to win, come out on top, and how he got there depended on many actions that most law abiding citizens would scorn. Still, he comes across as likable. This is not your usual villain.

There is also a heroine in the book (no, not wife Imogene): Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Imagine a woman working in Washington, DC in the 1920s as the Assistant Attorney General of the United States. Who knew there was a woman in such a powerful and unusual position so many years ago in American history? Suddenly Abbott's book becomes an interesting presentation of women's studies in US politics. Willebrandt was appointed to this prestigious position just nine months after American women were given the right to vote! Amazing history. Amazing times. Unfortunately for Willebrandt, her Washington bosses assigned her the task of keeping tabs on the Volstead Act, and Mabel - who had, before Prohibition - enjoyed an occasional glass of wine, was forced to put all her energies into this new law and to go after its biggest offenders. Mabel had to do what Mabel had to do because she was a woman in a high-up position, reportable to men, and trying to prove that women were equal and capable and could fit right in government roles as well as the males one normally expected to find there. The reader will root for Mabel, right? Well . . .maybe . . .

That is the interesting dilemma in Abbott's book. Who does one root for? Who is the villain? Who is the hero/heroine? Is anyone? Or does it change from day to day, chapter to chapter? The characters - all very real people - are what make THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK so captivating. One turns the pages quickly trying to settle into a fan club for someone: Remus? Imogene? Willebrandt? The reader's feelings for the various players changes frequently. How can one like Remus who is such a scheming and violent man? It turns out he is actually quite likable despite his faults and mistakes. How can one not feel devastated to hear that Imogene has been killed? When does the reader lose empathy? And as far as cheering for pioneering feminist, Maude Willebrandt? Her story and actions grow old, and the reader becomes frustrated and annoyed with her. THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK is the most memorable book of recent times in which villains and heroes are not clearcut. It is a book that makes one think and question: what is a villain? what is a hero?

That Prohibition was wrong is certainly an ongoing theme throughout Abbott's work. If the Volstead Act had not gone through, there would have been no George Remus as bootlegger, no GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK, and perhaps no death of Imogene. Who knows what Mabel would have been able to do in Washington, DC if she had been assigned another task. As for Washington,DC itself, Abbott continues to give us lessons in American history, perhaps one of the most important being the high-level involvement and complicity of male government employees in the cover-up and side cash business of Prohibition. Yes, there is corruption on all levels in this fast-paced book. Plenty of action - and learning - for everyone. The one area Abbott didn't delve in too deeply was mental health, and, for the main character, George Remus, it is likely that most readers will want to know more. The man was a bit of a genius, but he was unstable and unpredictable in the most amazing ways. Abbott, probably wisely, left the mental-health issues to the courtroom: Remus defending himself based on the insanity plea, and the reports of alienists (psychiatrists) who studied him. It will be tempting for readers to speculate on his actual diagnosis, however. If he were alive and being tried today, what would we hear from the mental-health experts? Was George Remus a classic psychopath?

THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK is a ride well worth taking. The book moves right along, the characters are absorbing, and with bootlegging and murder and other crimes thrown in, what could go wrong in such a work? Not much. Abbott proves once again that she is the queen of this particular genre of nonfiction. An earlier book of hers, SIN IN THE SECOND CITY: MADAMS, MINISTERS, PLAYBOYS AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S SOUL is another recommended read. Check it out.

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Cheryl K Johnson
A great story, and an eye-opening education about the era
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2023
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
I picked up this book because it was recommended by Erik Larson, one of my favorite authors. It's a great, hard-to-believe story—and an eye-opening education on just how influential bootlegging was on the US economy and justice system. If you're a listener to podcasts like Serial or Revisionist History, I think you will not be disappointed.

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Gwyn L
Interesting but not exciting
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2020
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
An interesting read, but not the page turner that I had anticipated. The book was well written and extremely well researched.

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3 people found this helpful

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Sonny N.
A Riveting True Crime Tale with Intriguing Depth!
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott is a masterfully crafted true crime narrative that plunges readers into a gripping story of bootlegging, murder, and the pursuit of justice. This book is a fascinating blend of historical intrigue and true crime drama, offering a captivating reading experience from start to finish.

Abbott’s storytelling is exceptional, bringing to life the roaring twenties with vivid detail and rich historical context. The book chronicles the rise and fall of George Remus, the notorious "Bootleg King," whose criminal empire and dramatic downfall make for a compelling read. The narrative is well-researched and meticulously detailed, providing a thorough exploration of the era's turbulent social and legal landscape.

The character portrayal is particularly noteworthy. Abbott does an excellent job of delving into the lives of the women who played pivotal roles in this saga, offering a nuanced perspective on their experiences and motivations. The stories of these women, intertwined with the central narrative of Remus's criminal activities and the ensuing murder trial, add depth and dimension to the story.

The pacing is spot-on, with each chapter building suspense and intrigue as the story unfolds. Abbott’s ability to weave together multiple narrative threads—ranging from criminal investigations to courtroom drama—keeps readers engaged and eager to see what happens next.

One of the highlights of this book is how it sheds light on lesser-known aspects of history, providing a fresh and insightful look at a fascinating period. The detailed research and vivid storytelling make The Ghosts of Eden Park a standout in the genre.

Overall, The Ghosts of Eden Park is a riveting and well-crafted true crime book that offers an enthralling glimpse into a dramatic chapter of American history. Karen Abbott’s engaging narrative and thorough research make it a highly recommended read for fans of true crime and historical nonfiction.

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Top reviews from other countries

JDM
Great Book
Reviewed in Canada on March 29, 2021
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

Amazing detail & research. Fast-paced read. Couldn't put the book down. Simply put, a GREAT book!

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Mervyn
real thriller headturner
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 26, 2021
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
amazing book about the time the scene this is a truly great read well focused and researched classic author

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Lorne Richardson
In depth research and wonderful storytelling
Reviewed in Canada on January 4, 2020
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
This is a great novel that brings to life the roaring twenties.The author really develops her characters and you feel you know them,warts and all.

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5.0 out of 5 stars What is a Villain? What is a Hero?

4.0 out of 5 stars A great story, and an eye-opening education about the era

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but not exciting

5.0 out of 5 stars A Riveting True Crime Tale with Intriguing Depth!

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book

5.0 out of 5 stars real thriller headturner

5.0 out of 5 stars In depth research and wonderful storytelling

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What is a Villain? What is a Hero?

A great story, and an eye-opening education about the era

Interesting but not exciting

A Riveting True Crime Tale with Intriguing Depth!

Great Book

real thriller headturner

In depth research and wonderful storytelling