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He was also a turncoat. Assistant Bureau Director Frank Burke, who had gone out of his way to help further Edgar’s career, now heard his protégé was calling him ‘a political hack’ behind his back. In his rage, he threatened to ‘kick hell out of’ Edgar. The next time the two men met, recalled Agent James Savage, ‘the young skinny Hoover had surrounded himself with three husky bodyguards – all on the Department payroll.’

Things were going from bad to worse at Justice. Harry Daugherty, Attorney General under the feeble new President Harding, was a political wheeler-dealer even less suited to the job than Palmer had been. Political abuse continued, with a heavy dose of corruption thrown in. It was now, in the Daugherty reshuffle of 1921, that Edgar finally joined the agency that would be his professional home for the rest of his life. On August 22 he was appointed Assistant Director of the Bureau of Investigation. The new Director, William Burns, a cigar-chomping former New York City detective, and something of a playboy, was a man who handed out jobs as political favors.

Daugherty was as gung ho to crush Communists and radicals as his predecessor. His tactics included spying on congressmen and senators, and some of the results went to Edgar. In the future, Edgar would always say carefully that there had been no snooping on Congress ‘since I became Director.’ That would not be true but, when he did become Director, he would cover his tracks.

Edgar’s brother Dickerson, less than impressed with Edgar’s title – Assistant Director, Bureau of Investigation – continued to tease him. One night, as Edgar walked home alone along Seward Square, he realized he was being followed. A shadowy figure vanished into the bushes behind him, then reappeared, rushing out of the darkness with a bloodcurdling yell – Dickerson! Edgar rushed home to Mother, tormented by his brother’s mocking laughter. Annie then took reprisals by stepping up her unkindnesses to Dickerson’s wife, whom she had always despised.

Jokes about detectives went down badly with Edgar. He claimed detective work held no allure, that he ‘detested’ crime fiction. Yet he owned a complete set of Sherlock Holmes stories, and was once spotted buying cheap detective magazines at a newsstand.

As Assistant Director, image and status were everything. Sometime earlier Edgar had become a Mason, going through the bizarre initiation ceremony that involved being blindfolded, having a noose placed around his neck and swearing at dagger point never to reveal Masonic secrets. Edgar would go on to become a Knight Templar, a Noble of the Mystic Shrine, on and up into the Masonic atmosphere until – at sixty – he attained the Ancient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-third Degree.

In the twenties, in an America hooked on jazz and dance marathons, he lived a prim life. He still had no girlfriends, but did see a lot of Frank Baughman, a former classmate he had brought into the Justice Department. Smartly turned out in white linen suits, the two of them would venture out to the new Fox movie theater on Sunday nights. They would remain lifelong friends, though Baughman reportedly ‘lost his inside track’ when he got married.

By his own account, Edgar’s one true love at the time was Spee De Bozo, the dog that became his pet in 1922. The dog, an Airedale, accompanied its master each morning to fetch the newspaper, and sat by the table to eat the food Edgar rejected. It was Spee De Bozo’s photograph, not that of a friend or relative, that Edgar kept on his desk at work. This was the first in a succession of seven dogs Edgar would own.

Years later, when Spee De Bozo died, Edgar made a production of the funeral. He and three male companions drove to Aspin Hill animal cemetery to watch, their hats on their shoulders, as the white-shrouded corpse was lowered into the earth. ‘This,’ Edgar told one of the cemetery staff, ‘is one of the saddest days of my life.’

FBI propagandists often used the dog angle. ‘I remember one individual,’ an aide would intone in