Strap yourself in for one roaring, ring-tailed ruckus of a read: Master craftsman Stephan Talty uncorks a spectacular story with exhaustive research in “The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 298 pp., $28). And not the least remarkable thing about this extraordinary story is that, from start to finish, it’s true. “Who had their child? La Mano Nera, as the Italians called it. The Society of the Black Hand.”

It’s 1906 in New York City. “The Black Hand was an infamous crime organization – ‘that fiendish, devilish and sinister band’ – that engaged in extortion, assassination, child kidnapping, and bombings on a grand scale. … Only the Ku Klux Klan would surpass the Black Hand for the production of mass terror in the early part of the century.” And who could stop them? Not the citizenry. Certainly not the politicians. For a time, one devoted individual. The head of the famous Italian Squad, the man The New York Times called “The Italian Sherlock Holmes.” Joseph Petrosino.