Who Are the Good Guys?

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

During the era of the Great Depression, a gigantic crime wave swept across America. The criminal organizations of Chicago and elsewhere were legendary, and the bank robbers, gang leaders, and other hoods of the day were as famous as the top film stars and athletes. Headlines were filled with the exploits of Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, Greta Garbo, and John Barrymore, but also John Dillinger, Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Bonnie and Clyde.


Athletic achievements reached new peaks. Ruth hit 60 home runs in a single year – more than most teams; Dempsey appeared invincible and sold out Yankee Stadium. The Golden Age of Hollywood filled movie theaters every night while a public sighting of a film star evoked shrieks of excitement and near riots.


And every few months new banner headlines screamed, THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!!! The Lindbergh kidnapping, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the Dillinger jailbreak, another bank robbery by Baby Face Nelson or Ma Barker and her boys set a fascinated nation abuzz with the horror of it all.


There seemed to be too much poverty, not enough rain, too few jobs, too much corruption, and so much crime that all of society was imperiled. Suddenly, as if on a white stallion, J. Edgar Hoover came to the rescue. His new Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted the worst criminals – each achieving fame as Public Enemy No. 1 – and brought them to justice, whether in front of a jury like Capone or by gunning them down like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde.


There was quickly an insatiable appetite to see, hear, and read about these saviors. Radio programs, movies, books, pulp magazines, and newspaper accounts featuring these fearless and honest G-men abounded. Not much later, they led the fight to protect the country from fascism and communism, receiving accolades from the citizens and journalists of America.


All this now seems as distant as the Peloponnesian War. Popular books and movies, not to mention the press, almost invariably portray the FBI as inept, rigid, stupid, and mean-spirited men in bad suits and white ties. When journalists write about Hoover, it is generally about the fact that he was gay (though – it needn’t even be said – that’s perfectly okay for everyone else) and that he wore dresses and high heels, a canard debunked years ago but relentlessly repeated as fact by the proudly unbiased press.


Precisely the same fate has befallen the CIA (previously the OSS), an organization of some of the bravest men in the country. The only time a CIA agent can be shown in a positive light today is if he’s a maverick. This highlights the ineptitude, rigidity, stupidity, mean-spiritedness, and bad wardrobe of everyone else in the company.


Several new books, all good, illustrate this attitudinal change – though not as extremely as, say, James Grady’s “Six Days of the Condor.” This novel, though a classic of espionage fiction, was the first (as far as I can recall) in which the CIA sets out to ruthlessly kill its own agents and anyone else who happens to get in the way.


In “No Way Back” (HarperCollins, 293 pages, $25.95) by Michael Crow, a Baltimore-based narcotics cop is placed on six months probation for operating outside the department’s rules. The maverick cop is instantly recruited by the CIA to protect a shady South Korean businessman on his way to Vladivostok, where he is about to make a deal with two corrupt Russian generals who have been set up by the CIA.


Easy job, just go in and get out. No sweat. Only if that were how it worked out, this would have been a boring short story. Since this is an exciting novel, complications are to be expected, and there are no disappointments on that score. There are double-crosses and betrayals – not, naturally, by the bad guys, but by a CIA operative. The agents at Langley are dismissed as “thumbsuckers,” and no one blinks at the blanket indictment.


David Ellis’s tour-de-force, “In the Company of Liars” (Putnam, 375 pages, $24.95), is told, like the very intelligent motion picture “Memento,” backward. It opens just after the apparent suicide of a young American novelist. As the reader moves forward in the book, the action recedes in time, showing how she got into the mess she found herself.


An FBI agent, Jane McCoy, had been pressuring the victim to implicate her former husband in a murder, not giving much heed to how this would affect their daughter. Finding the body, she tries not to blame herself. “She has seen death and tried hard to deny responsibility. It does no good to grieve excessively.” Cold.


Few authors can tell stories as briskly as Stephen J. Cannell, and “Cold Hit” (St. Martin’s, 372 pages, $24.95) is no exception. The years he spent creating such hit television series as the “Rockford Files,” “Hunter,” “Wiseguy,” and “The A-Team” evidently taught him the value of moving the action along, and that has been a trademark of his bestselling novels.


In what has become a familiar set piece for films and novels of the past quarter-century or more, there is a confrontation between the police (in this case, the LAPD) and the FBI, in which the Feds are made to appear silly, the hapless butt of jokes. How this has been accomplished with such regularity, and been accepted by readers and moviegoers as realistic, baffles me.


To be a cop, you need a high school education. To be an FBI agent, you need a college degree, with additional postgraduate degrees as well. Yet the cops are always smarter than the FBI guys. Could be, I suppose, but to an outsider like me it seems as phony as a hooker being paid by the moan.



Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use