The Book of Lies

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Over the past two years, I’ve spent far more time than I ever anticipated thinking I could solve the murder of who killed Mitchell Siegel. From the original death certificate, to the built-in lore that comes with any family’s stories, to tracking down the old owners of the funeral home that held his body in 1932, I took up this quest in the hopes of unearthing real answers about why the world actually got Superman. And to this day, I am convinced that the only reason young Jerry Siegel dreamed of a bulletproof man is because of the robbery that took his father.

But to be clear, this book is a work of fiction. Yes, Mitchell Siegel was in the Russian army, and there is no explanation for how (at such a young age and with no money) he got out of the army and was able to come to America, but that does not mean that he was a government asset or that he found the murder weapon that Cain used to kill Abel.

But.

The details of Jerry’s life—the unsolved, uninvestigated death of his father, the fact that half the family was told it was a heart attack and the other half a shooting, the two Superman stories that preceded Action Comics (one whose art is seen in these pages, of a robber pointing a gun at an innocent man), that all of this happened right after Mitchell died, plus the fact that in thousands of interviews, Jerry never once—not once—ever mentioned his father at all—these observations are not just me playing fanboy psychologist (okay, maybe it partly is). The death certificate says Mitchell Siegel had a heart attack during a robbery. The robbery was never investigated. No autopsy was done. And at least one of the coroners I spoke to pointed out that a small .22-caliber gun (favored in 1932 during the Depression) would not leave an entry mark in someone’s chest (easily making anyone there mistake it for a heart attack). We’ll never know. But in that moment, young Jerry did create the ultimate orphan story. And in 1932, the newspaper did run an editorial about vigilantes—written by someone named Luther—the day after his father’s death. There are parts of this story that cannot be argued away.

Jerry Siegel knew the benefits of thinking big, which is why he hid his ashes inside a set of fake books in the hopes that his memory would live on forever (that’s true, too). And in a place like America, which was founded on our own legends and myths, I believe it’s vital that we know where those myths come from, even if it means admitting our own vulnerabilities. That’s how we truly honor our heroes.

For me, Superman’s greatest contribution has never been the superhero part; it’s the Clark Kent part—the idea that any of us, in all our ordinariness, can change the world.

As for Cain and the Thule Society, it is true that in 1936, the head of the Nazi SS went to explore the first rock art site in Sweden, in one of many quests to find the origins of the Aryan race. What they unearthed was a carving of a man with raised arms, which they believed was “the Son of God.” The explorations continued for years, many led by Thule leaders. What else did they find? C’mon, I gotta have something to put at www.BradMeltzer.com.

Finally, and perhaps most important, in the past few months, a small group of us have been working to raise money to save the bright blue Siegel house that is now falling apart on Kimberly Avenue in Cleveland. The city ignored it for decades. Not anymore. By the time you read this, the house should finally have its plaque. Wanna see what else we can do? Visit www.OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com.

Brad Meltzer

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 2008