The Writing Master

EXPANDED AND REVISED
The Writing Master reveals, for the first time, the career of a 19th-century criminal mastermind, James B. Crosse. Crosse committed many crimes under undetected aliases: store break-ins, bank robberies, Wall Street stock forgeries, counterfeiting conspiracies, etc. His career revolved around a female blackmailer who matched his capacity for deceit and cunning, Jane Fleming. For several years, his accomplice was a mixed-race slave, Bob Burwell, whom some observers believed to be craftier than Crosse himself. In many respects, Crosse appears to have modeled himself after the shape-shifting huckster figure of Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man. The Writing Master is a true crime story, introducing readers to a figure as ingenious as the fictional Professor Moriarty and as charming as Raffles the Amateur Cracksman. Along the way, Crosse and Fleming encountered the great detectives who pursued them; colorful rogues and thieves; and historical figures such as President Andrew Johnson and the great villain of the age, John Wilkes Booth. This revised edition adds two new chapters with newly unearthed information, expanded footnotes, and a larger index.