In the shadows of the reflecting fire, her face was lovely, but she looked tired, and sad—or anyway melancholy, which is the wealthy’s way of feeling sad.
I have a memory of the first time my parents ever mentioned the Lindbergh kidnapping. To them, it was almost like a tragedy in the family. Charles Lindbergh was not only a national hero, he was a Minnesota hero, a Swedish boy from Little Falls. My father, a frustrated aviator, idolized him.
Max Allan Collins’ Stolen Away is a fictionalized account of the investigation, starring his private eye character Nathan Heller (I said I’d come back to this series, and I have). It’s a long and convoluted book, because it was a long and convoluted investigation. Judging from the author’s overview of source materials at the end, it appears one could do worse than come to this book first, if one were in the market for a comprehensive account of the whole thing (always taking fictional elements into consideration, of course).
The story starts in Chicago in 1932, when young Nathan Heller, a police detective, sights a suspicious woman carrying a baby through the LaSalle Street railroad station. Because police all over the country have been keeping their eyes out for the missing Lindbergh baby, he follows her, which leads to a gunfight and the recovery of the kidnapped baby—of a bootlegger. Continue reading Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins