The Anarchist: A Novel

On a stifling, hot afternoon in September 1901, a young anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, who has been stalking President William McKinley, waits in line to meet the president, his right hand wrapped in a handkerchief and held across his chest as though it were in a sling.  But the handkerchief conceals a .32-caliber revolver. When the president greets him, Czolgosz fires two shots.

The nation quickly plummets into fear and anger.  A week later, rioting mobs attempt to lynch McKinley’s assassin, and across the country, political dissidents such as the notorious Emma Goldman are tracked down and arrested.  Driven by a sense of duty and by his love for a beautiful Russian prostitute, Czolgosz’s confidant, Moses Hyde, infiltrates an anarchist group as it sets in motion a deadly scheme designed to push the country into a state of terror.

The Anarchist brilliantly renders a haunting and belligerent twentieth-century landscape teeming with corrupt politicians, kind-hearted prostitutes, dissidents, and immigrants eager for a fresh start.  It is an America where every allegiance is questioned, and every hope and aspiration comes at a price.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Ron Charles Alleged White House party crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi never posed any threat to the president, but they reached him so easily at a time of heightened security that the parallels to a tragic encounter 100 years ago are truly frightening. In 1901, as today, America was suffering economic turmoil while battling shadowy zealots trying to destabilize Western governments with acts of terror and assassination. These early-20th-century anarchists disrupted markets and kept political leaders in a state of constant anxiety. Given the threat level, the rumors about plots against the president's life and the unprecedented security arrayed to protect him, how could a young man walk up to President William McKinley and murder him? That shocking breach of security is the subject of John Smolens's smart and compelling historical thriller. Although the story takes place in Buffalo, it's at a time when the influence of Washington, D.C., is flooding over that city. Newly reelected President McKinley is coming in a month with his fragile wife to see the Pan-American Exposition and deliver the most important speech of his career. He's determined to be accessible, even with the murders of Lincoln and Garfield still haunting the nation. A Pinkerton detective named Jake Norris has been sent ahead from the capital to investigate any possible threats, but the leads are so numerous that "it's like trying to hold water in your palm." On the first page, one of Norris's recently hired spies is pulled from the Erie Canal; someone beat her to death with a rope. So begins a frantic search to stop a man who will eventually alter 20th-century history. Smolens creates the whole spectrum of 1901 Buffalo, from the garish whorehouses where assassins' plans are whispered, to the elegant residence where the McKinleys and their entourage prepare for the largest crowd that has ever seen a president. But beyond the rich detail of an era rushing from horse-drawn carriages to newfangled automobiles, the novel is very much invested in its ensemble of characters, both real and invented. The relationship between McKinley and his wife is drawn with such tenderness that the dim sepia-toned images of our 25th president -- so long eclipsed by Teddy Roosevelt -- will be forever replaced in your mind. Detective Norris is a striking figure, too, an arrogant, brutally efficient man determined to maintain the Pinkertons' reputation without any qualms about civil rights. But the real hero of the novel is a canal worker named Moses Hyde, whom Norris enlists to spy on an anarchist who's been talking about shooting the president. The Pan-American Exposition has never attained the mythic status of Ford's Theatre or Dealey Plaza, but if you're interested in a historical novel like this, you already know what's going to happen to McKinley in Buffalo, which makes creating suspense a serious problem. Smolens surmounts that challenge by placing the assassination just a third of the way through the novel. While the tragedy plays out with sober inevitability, it's still an extraordinarily gripping scene, slowed to quarter speed and realized in small, intimate details. Leon Czolgosz (Shol-gosh), the calm young man who walks up to McKinley and shoots him twice with a handgun, is a haunting presence throughout "The Anarchist." Convinced that "as long as there are leaders, none of us will ever be free," Czolgosz won't defend himself or help his court-appointed lawyers enter an insanity plea during the cursory trial. Smolens has no interest in exonerating this lost son of Polish immigrants, but he presents the assassin in all his odd contradictions and tragic naivete. The man who sometimes went by the name "Neiman" ("Nobody" in German) is eerily gentle and egotistical, alternately fragile and impassioned, and deeply entranced by the rabble-rousing of Emma Goldman. Seeing the mob trying to break into the prison and kill him, he's pleased: "He had done this," he thinks with pride. "He had caused them to come together. Hatred and anger were necessary to change. . . . Perhaps this one act, assassinating William McKinley, would spark the revolt and thousands of workers would rise up." It's a terrifying example of the danger posed by one lonely, messianic man. "You're perfectly rational," a psychiatrist tells Czolgosz in prison. "People like you will be a great threat in the future." Have you ever cut yourself on a piece of glass without realizing it? Just like that, Smolens slides through gruesome episodes in such muted, unadorned prose that you barely realize what's happened until you see the blood. The genius of this novel is the tension he creates by moving quickly from quiet, moving scenes in the president's sickroom or Czolgosz's prison cell to raw, startling flashes of violence during the criminal investigation. As the country burns with paranoia, anarchists, socialists and communists are rounded up, beaten and detained, while Norris and Hyde race to catch a conspirator who may kill them first. It's an enthralling descent into the dark byways of the criminal mind and the vast system of canals that ran through Buffalo. Here is the crime that launched the 20th century, the unlikely imprint of a lonely man's delusion on the soft metal of the world. charlesr@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Smolens's plodding sixth novel revolves around the assassination of President McKinley. Among the ensemble cast is assassin Leon Czolgosz; Buffalo police captain Lloyd Savin; Pinkerton agent Jake Norris; and various informants, the most important of whom is Hyde, the only person who knows what Czolgosz looks like and thus is in high demand by both the police and the grimy assortment of anarchists and thugs who hope to exploit the shooting for their own purposes. Czolgosz remains a bit of a cipher: he's enamored, sometimes to the point of delusion, of Emma Goldman, but his motives for wanting to assassinate the president are murky; sometimes he wants to secure his place in history, and sometimes the killing is his duty. Though other characters fare better—Hyde is particularly well drawn—Smolens never fully sells the era, leaning too heavily on cut-and-dried class and ethnic tensions (the white establishment oppressing the immigrant anarchists), while the surprisingly reserved narrative feels very at odds with the inherent tension of the assassination plot. The prose is competent, even rather nice at times, but the narrative's slowness is crippling. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot twice by a young, unbalanced anarchist, Leon Czolgosz; McKinley died a week later. The weeks preceding and following the assassination are the subject of this intense, moody, and engrossing novel. Smolens is the author of five previous novels, and he is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University. He provides an excellent portrait of the seamier side of the Gilded Age. He captures the virulence of class hatred and the aura of violence that hung over various radical groups. There are finely drawn characters, including a Russian Jewish whore with a heart of gold and corrupt policemen and politicians. At the center of the narrative are two contrasting men drawn together by events: Norris is a hard-nosed Pinkerton detective with contempt for working-class activists; Hyde is his informer with ambivalent feelings toward the anarchist movement. He is sympathetic with their demands for social justice but repelled by their violent tendencies. This is a well-written novel that works as both a political thriller and as a depiction of a tumultuous era in our history. --Jay Freeman