NONFICTION REVIEW: "We Is Got Him"

In 1874, a 4-year-old boy at the center of the United States' first kidnapping for ransom had just taken a bath, had allowed a pink ribbon to be tied in his long hair and had just ventured outdoors to play with his older brother, Walter. Charley Ross was shy, yet he and his 5-year-old sibling followed two strange men into a wagon with the irresistible promise of sweets and firecrackers. Walter would be let go shortly afterward outside of Philadelphia, not far from the boys' home in Germantown. Charley disappeared, setting off a heartbreaking manhunt in which inept police work and politics won out over compassion and sound judgment.

Carrie Hagen's fast-paced "We Is Got Him" sets up a dual story of the search for Charley and his abductors during the politically charged planning of the United States' Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. That the two events actually overlap is a writer's gift to Hagen, but more the result of her triple-threat skills as researcher, journalist and storyteller.

The search for Charley places his father, Christian Ross, a failing businessman of limited means, at the mercy of Philadelphia Mayor William Stokley and a powerful group of businessmen sinisterly known as the Advisers. Above all, these men feared that paying the $20,000 ransom for Charley would set off a series of similar kidnappings that would hurt the promotion of the centennial and, most important, slow the wads of cash that would flow into the city for civic improvements.

The real drama is played out between Christian Ross and Charley's captors in the personal ads of the newspapers. The ransom notes are surprisingly entertaining in their breathtaking misspellings and grammatical flight of fancy. But they are also murderously chilling.

"... we tel yu positively Mr. Ros his hiding place must be his tomb unless you bring him out with the ransom for we have a settled plan to act upon and we shal never digress from it and that is death or ransom."

Unlike Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City," which spun two narratives of serial murder and the building of Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, the twin stories in "We Is Got Him" are not equally compelling. The kidnapping story is the stronger of the two and takes the reader into the kidnapper's haunts -- the violent slums of New York City. The descriptions are stunning, such as this one, which describes an area known as "The Bend":

"Emaciated children with hacking coughs and spotty faces ate stale bread, and grocers paced in front of old, rotten slabs of meat hanging from their store doors."

The story of the planning of the centennial celebration is less evocative, if only because it is all too familiar. When big money is involved, no matter what happens, the show must go on.

Stephen J. Lyons' latest book is "The 1,000-Year Flood: Destruction, Loss, Rescue, and Redemption Along the Mississippi River."