Show Us False Faces!

False Faces on Quality Street“>

Has anyone ever heard of the novel False Faces on Quality Street?

It’s a silly but engaging account of the Kansas City underworld of the late 1910s, but all the Kansas City stuff is transparently disguised: The Quackenboss machine runs Larcen City, but it clashes with “fearless journalist” Col. Horace Rockwell. “By virtue of his virile journalism,” we’re told, “Larcen City is transformed … It now boasts a school system of the first rank. Its parks and boulevards are models for other cities. A half-score of railroads converge here, and dump into the laps of a prosperous people the surplus wealth of a surrounding territory flowing with milk and honey.”