Talk about ethnic profiling. Early in the 20th century, the New York City Police Department’s highest-ranking Italian-American officer estimated that perhaps one-fifth of his fellow countrymen in Manhattan were involved in criminal activity. And no one was more determined to reform the image of his fellow immigrants than he.

In “The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28), Stephan Talty resurrects the engaging tale of Joseph Petrosino, who almost single-handedly battled prejudice in the department and suspicion from his countrymen, whom the Black Hand subjected to a reign of terror that the author likens to what black Americans faced from the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Talty, an author of narrative nonfiction and psychological thrillers, transforms would could have been another rehashed biography into an absorbing exploration of one man’s obsession to redeem his heritage amid familiar fears of foreigners.

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Mr. Petrosino immigrated to the United States with his father in 1873 when he was 13; managed to apprentice himself to Clubber Williams, the notoriously tough cop from Manhattan’s tenderloin district; graduated from the White Wings corps of street sweepers to the police force; became the first Italian-American detective sergeant; and insinuated himself into the thankless job of eradicating the Black Hand, the gang of kidnappers and extortionists who preyed on vulnerable Italian immigrants.