Detecting More in the Story

PINKERTON'S SECRET

By Eric Lerner

Henry Holt. 317 pp. $25

Allan Pinkerton's life story has always read like a spy thriller. The hard-edged Scottish immigrant entered the pages of history as the founder of the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency and as the head of the Union intelligence service during the Civil War. The dramatic Pinkerton logo -- with the motto "We Never Sleep" coiled beneath the image of a stern, unblinking eye -- became such a potent and universal emblem that it inspired the phrase "private eye." Pinkerton was also a staunch abolitionist, running a station on the Underground Railroad at great personal risk, and an early convert to the notion of women in the workplace, hiring America's first female detective, a young widow named Kate Warne, in 1856.

The career of Kate Warne forms an intriguing chapter of the Pinkerton story, though the official record of her service is sketchy at best. Pinkerton had grave reservations about placing a woman in harm's way, but Warne managed to convince him, as he later recounted it, that she would be able to "worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access." Over the years it has been suggested that Pinkerton's interest in Warne evolved into something more than that of a protective employer -- they are buried side by side -- but this remains a subject for speculation. In any event, Pinkerton made no secret of his high opinion of her work as an agent: "Mrs. Warne never let me down."

Eric Lerner, a successful screenwriter, has fleshed out the bones of this story into a gripping historical novel. He brings a cloak-and-dagger sensibility to episodes such as the "Baltimore Plot" to assassinate President-elect Lincoln as he traveled to Washington for his inauguration, and the smashing of the Confederate spy ring headed by Rose Greenhow, the notorious "Wild Rose of the Confederacy." In Lerner's hands, even the cotton futures market becomes the stuff of drama. At the same time, the author cannily exploits the gaps in the Pinkerton legend where imagination can be given free rein, creating a tense and complicated relationship between Pinkerton and the steely Warne.

"Pinkerton's Secret" is cast as a memoir penned by Pinkerton in his twilight years. Lerner's Pinkerton is driven, vain and unforgiving, seeking to correct misconceptions and settle old scores: "I am not so naive as to be unaware that today, in 1883, when so many things are taken for granted in our modern age, some readers of this memoir will jump to the conclusion that I am merely taking credit for the obvious and living up to my detractors' charge of grandiosity," he writes. "In point of fact, my method was not at all obvious back then, and only seems so today because it was obvious then to me alone, and over the course of my long career I have succeeded, in the face of incredulity, in making it obvious to one and all."

Pinkerton's single-minded devotion to duty leaves him somewhat oblivious to the carryings-on of his employees. On the eve of a crucial mission, when he discovers that Warne has fallen in love with Timothy Webster, his best operative, Pinkerton responds with blinkered outrage: " What in hell was going on? I could not spare a single precious moment to find out, when the fate of the Nation weighed so heavily on my shoulders. I had to maintain at all costs my composure under fire and not allow myself to be distracted from the most important mission of my life by the silly romantic byplay of my two operatives."

Soon enough, however, Pinkerton's composure slips away as he himself falls prey to Warne's charms, becoming embroiled in a romantic triangle that tests his resolve and his loyalties. When Pinkerton sends his rival on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines, Lerner catches a note of nagging self-doubt in the detective's attempt to justify his actions: "It all made perfect strategic sense. I am not going to waste the reader's time debating the question of whether I had some ulterior motive . . . I was trying to win a war! The idea that I set it all up just to have access to Mrs. Warne is preposterous."

Lerner has a jarring habit of breaking the flow of his narrative with provocative, over-the-top zingers intended to shock and titillate. Abraham Lincoln is described as a "ninny," Lincoln's wife is a "crazy bitch" and God, no less, is dismissed as a "miserable, lonely, horny bastard." When these histrionics lose their punch, Lerner simply drops the Big Expletive, often to ludicrous effect. It is hard to imagine a reader above the age of 15 who will warm to this.

The author does better when he lets the material breathe on its own. Late in the book, Pinkerton and Warne lament the fate of a black man who had performed dangerous missions for the agency during the war, but later, under the restrictive politics of Reconstruction, found himself mopping floors in a sheriff's office. "I know you tried to keep him on as an operative," Warne says. "But you could hire an entire female detective force before you could employ one black detective." It is one of many fine moments in this novel where history speaks for itself.