True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office

These accounts come from the case files of a big-city district attorney's office in the early twentieth century. The collection opens with a familiar friction: detectives attached to local police precincts and the investigators at headquarters often compete for credit, and information does not always pass between them. The episode at the centre concerns the arrest of a woman named Mrs. Parker. The precinct officers made the arrest and took the glory without telling the headquarters sergeants who had been assigned to the case. Told from the viewpoint of the prosecutor's office, the stories show how crimes were investigated, how evidence was pursued and how rivalries within the police shaped the outcome.