St. James Park

Description

“A sweeping tale that offers lessons from the not-so-distant past.” -Kirkus Reviews

“Doll masterfully reveals what lies just below the surface of every human soul.” -Judge Paul Bernal, official historian of the City of San Jose

“Cinematic in its scope, St. James Park is a movie waiting to be made.” -Joe Talbot, director of The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

In a time when department stores ruled downtowns, a prominent store heir is kidnapped in 1933 under suspicious circumstances, and Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation sends cynical agent Louis Cooper to investigate.

Cooper discovers that this crime is only a prelude to a dangerous play by the local power structure to expand control amid spiraling economic disruption, labor unrest, and anti-immigrant racism.

As Cooper unravels long-standing but shifting alliances of business leaders, city officials, and mobsters, he learns who is behind the kidnapping and why-but not in time to prevent a raging mob bent on vengeance.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: John Doll
Published: 08/19/2025
Publisher: Koehler Books
ISBN: 9798888248072
Pages: 334
Weight: 0.99lbs
Size: 0.75″ H x 9.00″ L x 6.00″ W

About the Author
Doll, John: – John Doll is a third-generation San Josean who listened to family confessions, rumors, hints, and denials of the crimes committed leading up to a fateful night in 1933 and the cover-up that followed. Having spent a career creating revitalization projects throughout the Bay Area, including restoration of a once premiere hotel in downtown San Jose, John Doll is now a recovering government bureaucrat, semiretired, living in San Francisco with his wife, Rachael.