Customer Reviews

Kill the Dutchman!: The Story of Dutch Schultz (Da Capo Paperback)

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This is probably the best book written about crime in the 1920s and 1930s, Dutch Schultz, and his life and times. Author Paul Sann has written a tough and revealing book second to none about this amazing era. A most read for anyone interested in these subjects.

This is one of my favorite gangster bios. Dutch Schultz was one of the most colorful and vicious mobsters of the Prohibition era and Sann's lively, tough prose brings the Dutchman vividly to life. No source notes for the more academic-minded readers but take it from me, it's "on the level" as Arthur Flegenheimer would probably say.

Kill The Dutchman reads like a classic Warner Brothers gangster picture starring James Cagney as Dutch Schultz. It's as if the real-life Arthur Flegenheimer was the proto-type of the ruthless gangster of the silver screen. With a sneer and brazen determination, Dutch Schultz, a man who sometimes spoke in crude criminal prose, emerges as the great anti-hero depicted in William Wellman's 1931 gangster film classic "The Public Enemy" four years before his "poetic" death.

"Kill the Dutchman" was written in 1971 by a grizzled veteran New York City newspaperman named Paul Sann. It chronicled the life and death of Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer, who controlled the Bronx beer industry and took over the policy, or "numbers," rackets in Harlem during the early Thirties. I must state that a large part of my problem with this book concerns the writing. It is riddled throughout with the author's glib comments and personal observations. An example: in recounting the hijacking of Schultz's beer trucks by members of the Vincent Coll mob, Mr. Sann interjects, "Remember when beer trucks were being hijacked, not jet planes?" - a reference to the rash of American planes which were overtaken by hijackers and forced to land in Cuba, a frequent occurence at the time the book was published. I'm sure that many readers might find this prose lively and colorful, but from a personal standpoint I felt it diminished the integrity of the story itself. However, if you are seeking a factual biography of one of the Prohibition Era's most celebrated mobsters, this is, unfortunately, probably the best one available at this time.

Paul Sann's effort in bringing back a violent period in America's history is successful in his account of the life of Arthur Fregenheimer, better known to intimates as "Dutch" Schultz, The Beer Baron of the Bronx. A detailed account of The Dutchman's demise is given and those involved in The Palace Bar and Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, in October of 1935. Three of Schultz's cronies in addition to The Dutchman were dispatched in a gunfight in which Charlie Workman shot Schultz in the mens' room. The book is filled with infamous names from the prohibition days in New York's underworld. Author Paul Sann has written other books regarding the post World War I era, and this book on Dutch Schultz illustrates the stressfulness of just staying alive for gangsters during this time period.