The Fox and the Flies: The Secret Life of a Grotesque Master Criminal Charles van Onselen(2007)

A masterwork of historical reconstruction―the life and times of an arch criminal who may well have been Jack the Ripper. During the three turbulent decades before World War I, Joseph Silver became the greatest criminal of his time, perfecting his skills as a burglar, gun runner, jewel thief, and ultimately trafficker in prostitution and female slavery across four continents. He was notorious even among his competitors at a time when such business was rampant on both sides of the Atlantic, and he covered his tracks with extraordinary skill. A chance encounter with Silver's career in South Africa set Charles van Onselen on a twenty five-year a journey to reconstruct the shadowy life and times of―in some ways to match wits with―a devious master criminal. From Russian Poland in the 1860s, where Silver was born Joseph Lis, to London in the 1880s, turn-of-the-century New York, Argentina, and Africa, van Onselen recaptures the dangerous demimonde of the Atlantic world. Silver's notoriety was