Further Reading.

• Fighting the Underworld
  by Philip S. Van Cise (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1936)

  How fledgling District Attorney Van Cise brought down the Blonger Gang, in his own words.

• Wildest of the West
  by Forbes Parkhill (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951)

  The Denver Post reporter who stumbled upon the 1922 raid in progress devotes a chapter to Lou Blonger and his schemes.

• Hustlers and Con Men
  by Jay Robert Nash (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1976)

  An excellent overview of all kinds of confidence games, with several pages devoted to Lou Blonger's crew.

• Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, by Jeff Smith (Juneau, AL: Klondike Research., 2009)

  The famous con man's great-grandson provides an exhaustive portrait of one of history's most storied swindlers. The Blonger and Smith gangs were closely connected for a time in Denver, and Smith serves up an enlightening look at the era.

• Norfleet, by J. Frank Norfleet (Fort Worth, Tex.: White Publishing Co., 1924)

  The Texas farmer who got scammed twice, then roamed the country seeking justice, tells how he helped bring down the Denver gang, among others.

• The Mark Inside, by Amy Reading (NY, NY: Knopf, 2012)

  Reading considers the tale told by J. Frank Norfleet of his pursuit of Joe Furey's gang, and his role in the raid that took down Lou Blonger's organization in Denver, in the larger context of the American swindler and our national fascination with the big con.

  
  

  Some of these books are out of print. They are often found in libraries, however, and are frequently available on eBay or in the used book section of Amazon.com.

  
  
  

Copyright Notice: Original material copyright 2003-2021 Scott Johnson and Craig Johnson. Other copyrights may apply to materials found herein. Our primary goal is to reintroduce the Blonger Bros. to the lexicon of the Wild West. We therefore encourage the use of our research, provided due credit is given.

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