There are about as many myths about J. Edgar Hoover as there are truths. While head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1935 to 1972, there were stories of homosexual trysts with his assistant director Clyde Tolson and that he routinely wore women’s clothing. While these are rumors just the same, they linger in the national psyche. Richard Hack’s Puppetmaster tries to get a more complete picture of the man behind one of the nation’s largest investigative groups.

While most of the information presented in Puppetmaster is good and interesting, the writing is simple and clunky. Hack goes off on too many tangents and includes too many minors details for the history to matter. To be fair, he has gathered a great deal of information about the life of J. Edgar Hoover and how he came to lead the nation’s police force for the better part of five decades. He dispels many of the popular rumors as meager and unsubstantiated, and tries to get to the meat of the story. Unfortunately, he misses the mark. This is a good starter biography, but I’m sure there are other better ones out there. ( )

In some ways this is an annoying book. Potentially a fascinating story, the author keeps intruding into it with some truly awful pieces of writing - for instance on discovery "by the hired help of Hoover's body: "Crawford raced from the room,...his fluttering heart threatening to fly from his chest and across the room". J. Edgar Hoover, love or hate him, was one of the important figures of the 20th century. Hopefully his life and times will encourage a further look by an author who can let the story stand on its own behalf. ( )

I would love to have rated this book higher, since J Edgar Hoover, past director of the FBI, is one of my favorite all time bad guys to read about. However, the author's writing reminded me of a graduate student putting together a thesis or paper -- either way too much detail about meaningless stuff (like the contents of various meals, including his last, or what he wore, or description of the day -- e.g. "the snow was coming down in flakes as big as blueberries" etc etc etc) and not enough depth into what I would consider the meat of the story. Every time Hack would get going on the FBI's involvement into this or that (and his wording would promise that you were really going to find out something incredible), he seemed to stray toward another tangent and I would be left wondering where the promised juicy tidbit went.

But aside from those problems, the book was interesting, and I learned a lot of good ole J.Edgar that I had not known before.

brief synopsis
Puppetmaster examines both career and personal life (and rumors involving his personal life) of J. Edgar Hoover. By the time Hoover died, he was 77, and had been in office over 50 years and had served something like 8 presidents. While Hoover felt that he was doing his best to eradicate such evils as Communism and insurgency within the borders of the US, he was a man whose personal beliefs were rigid and did not evolve with the changing needs of the country. He was overly impressed with himself; no one could cross Hoover without finding the contents of his or her secret file being released to the public in some form or other. He built his reputation by conducting illegal activities and gathering intelligence on anyone he considered to be even remotely a threat either to the US or to the FBI (as in reputation), and authorized the use of "black bag jobs" such as illegal eavesdropping to build up his files. The man was a one man power base and had everyone afraid of him. He was often identified as the head of the American "gestapo" or "nkvd" and this description wasn't too far off the mark.

Hoover is a fascinating study. I do recommend this book with the caveat that it is told simplistically so if you are looking for something rather more in depth, you won't like it. ( )