An account of the abduction of Oklahoma City businessman Charles Urschel in 1933 and the subsequent manhunt - both of which had lasting significance for crime-fighting in America. Stanley Hamilton rekindles the spirit of yesterday's newsreels to chronicle the capture of "Machine Gun" Kelly.

He assembles a cast of larger-than-life characters to weave this tale of true crime, one of the largest of whom was the 38-year-old director of the national police force, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had revitalized an ineffective agency whose operatives were still not authorized to carry firearms or make arrests, and when the Urschel case broke, it was Hoover who stepped up to coordinate the manhunt. Hamilton takes readers behind the scenes in Hoover's operation to show how this case was responsible for popularizing the G-man and institutionalizing the FBI, creating the agent-as-hero image that replaced earlier characterizations of blundering foils to glamorous gangsters. This iconic kidnapping case, breathlessly followed by a fascinated public, was so quickly and effectively concluded that it was largely instrumental in bringing about the end of the Gangster Era in America. Machine Gun Kelly's Last Stand brings that era to life again by providing a fresh look at one of America's most notorious criminals, vividly recreating the times in which he lived and sharing the stories of the people whose lives he touched.