My portrait of Estes Kefauver is drawn primarily from the following sources: Estes Kefauver: A Biography (1980), Charles L. Fontenay; Kefauver (1971), Joseph Bruce Gorman; The Kefauver Story (1956), Jack Anderson and Fred Blumenthal; and Standing Up for the People: The Life and Work of Estes Kefauver (1972), Harvey Swados.
Two books relating to Kefauver, however, must be singled out as particularly key to this novel: the first-rate scholarly work The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime, 1950–1952 (1974), William Howard Moore; and the senator’s own Crime in America (1951), Estes Kefauver. Also, in addition to photocopies of actual testimony, I used the government document The Third Interim Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (1951).
I am an enormous Frank Sinatra fan, with an extensive library of books on the singer, his life, and his art; the portrait in this novel — meant to be fair and even affectionate, without ducking certain realities — was primarily drawn from Frank Sinatra: An American Legend (1995, 1998), Nancy Sinatra; Frank Sinatra: Is This Man Mafia? (1979), George Carpozi, Jr.; His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (1986), Kitty Kelley; Sinatra: Behind the Legend (1997), J. Randy Taraborrelli; and The Sinatra Files: The Secret FBI Dossier (2000), Tom Kuntz and Phil Kuntz, editors. Some Sinatra fans may object to my using the Kelley book as a source; I feel this is balanced out by the Nancy Sinatra biography, which has an excellent year by year (sometimes day by day!) breakdown of her father’s remarkable life.
Jayne Mansfield and her first husband Paul are, obviously, real people; I remind my readers that these are, like all of the characterizations in this novel, fictionalizations. The story Vera tells in this novel about her rape is one reported in several books and something she apparently told from time to time; but I have reason to disbelieve it — and its suggestion about the paternity of her first child. Also, the events in her life described herein — including her studying at UCLA and her attempt to become Miss California, as well as Paul’s objections to both — have been moved in time a few months, to accommodate the needs of this narrative. Consulted were Jayne Mansfield’s Wild, Wild World (1963), Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay; Jayne Mansfield (1973), May Mann; Sexbomb: The Life and Death of Jayne Mansfield (1988), Guus Luijters and Gerard Timmer; The Tragic Secret Life of Jayne Mansfield (1974), Raymond Strait; and Va Va Voom! (1995), Steve Sullivan. Strait also published Here They Are — Jayne Mansfield (1992), with a new copyright and no mention of the earlier Tragic Secret Life, although they appear to be substantially the same book with different pictures.
Major sources for the Drew Pearson characterization were Confessions of a Muckraker (1979), Jack Anderson with James Boyd, and Drew Pearson: An Unauthorized Biography (1973), Oliver Pilat. Although I have gathered numerous books on Joseph McCarthy and the McCarthy Era, his characterization here primarily depended upon The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (1982), Thomas C. Reeves, and McCarthy — the Man, the Senator, the “Ism” (1952), Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May. Jack Anderson wins the M.V.P. award for writing three of the books I used as sources on three different subjects touched upon (in addition to being a character — albeit an offstage one) in this novel.
Three books on Chicago crime were very helpful: Barbarians in Our Midst (1952), Virgil Peterson (with a Kefauver introduction); Syndicate City (1954), Alson J. Smith; and To Serve and Collect (1998), Richard C. Lindberg. The latter covers the Drury case in some depth, as does George Murray’s The Madhouse on Madison Street (1965), a book on Chicago newspapermen in which Drury is viewed in the context of his journalistic endeavors.
