This "latest episode in the Bob Lee Swagger saga ... finds Bob uncovering his family's secret Tommy gun war with 1930s gangsters like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson"--Amazon.com.

When Bob Lee Swagger, now in Idaho, finally sells the land he owned in Arkansas, the developers begin to tear down the old homestead and uncover a steel case hidden in the foundation. The case contains a batch of 1934 memorabilia a much-corroded FBI badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a gun clip, and a cryptic diagram, all belonging to Charles Swagger. Bob never knew his grandfather Charles, who died before he was he born, and his father Earl refuses to mention him. Fascinated by this new information, Bob is driven to find out what happened to his grandfather, and why his own father, whom he worshiped, never spoke of Charles. But as he investigates further, Bob learns that someone is following him, someone with his own obsession of finding out what Charles Swagger left behind.

"A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage's monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover's life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party. G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century"--