Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, & then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, & dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, & society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent & invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black h&. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press & heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public & the Black Hand`s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the ” Italian Sherlock Holmes, ” he was a famously dogged & ingenious detective, & a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre & the Black Hand`s activities spread far beyond New York`s borders, Petrosino & the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country`s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino`s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand`s power would take him all the way to Sicily-but at a terrible cost. Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.