If you are into history of the depression years, sports and crime this is the riveting book for you. I am into two of those, history and crime though not sports and it was still riveting for me. Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a baseball star who roused the Great Depression’s hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. Not something the Tigers have become accustomed to. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey—all while Joe Louis chased boxing’s heavyweight crown.

Amidst such glory, the Legion’s dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean’s involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey’s Cochrane’s reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s brutal union buster.

Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, Terror in the City of Champions features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence.
.

I received a free Kindle copy of the book courtesy of Net Galley and Rowan Littlefield, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my review blog. I also posted it on my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested a copy of this book as I have an keen interest in baseball and the description sounded fascinating. This is the first book by Tom Stanton that I have read.

The subtitle of the book "Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that shocked depression-era Detroit" is spot on as to the subject of the book. There are brief mentions of the Detroit Lions and the Detroit Red Wings as they also won championships during the mid-1930's.

The book primarily focuses on two subjects - the Detroit Tigers and the Black Legion. It addresses how the Tigers developed into World Champions for the first time, the relationship of some of the individuals involved with the club and the Black Legion, and the Black Legion itself. I will not spoil the book for those who have not read it, but I will say the the Black Legion gave the Ku Klux Klan a run for their money as to who was the most notorious organization at that time.

I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in baseball and crime.