War in Illinois

by Donald Bain

Though civil violence was commonplace in Southern Illinois during Prohibition--it was not unusual for men to walk the city streets carrying Tommy guns--the War in Illinois reached proportions bordering on the lunatic when two rival bootlegging gangs became engaged in an all-out struggle for control of the territory. Bain reconstructs a mind-boggling series of events with a cast of characters like no other on the American landscape: Charlie Birger, a self-styled Robin Hood whose paranoia led him to dispose of his own men one by one; the Shelton Brothers, whose bungling and sheer idiocy were outweighed only by their wanton disregard for life; Helen Holbrook, the woman who played both sides and lost; Jim Pritchard, the incorruptible sheriff who tricked Birger into giving himself up; and S. Glenn Young, the madman hired by the Ku Klux Klan to rid Southern Illinois of bootleggers.