Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective

For one year, writer Jay Atkinson worked as a private eye for the storied firm McCain Investigations, founded by the late Joe McCain, one of the most decorated police officers in Boston history. In this colorful narrative, Atkinson describes the cases he worked that year, chasing down an assortment of felons, thieves, and con artists, as well as the ghost of a real American hero, legendary cop Joe McCain.

Big Joe was the genuine article, a detective so committed to his work that a gunshot wound suffered in the line of duty took thirteen years to kill him.

In Legends of Winter Hill Atkinson traces Big Joe’s career from the day he put on his Boston Metropolitan Police uniform in the 1950s through the heyday of his run-ins with mafiosi, bad cops, and ruthless killers, up to his death in 2001. Atkinson also follows the career of Joe McCain’s son, Joe Jr., a tattooed motorcycle fanatic who took up the mantle of his father and became a cop himself.

Legends of Winter Hill takes you into an alluring and gritty world where heroes go unsung every day and moral boundaries aren’t always black and white.