Two noted authors tell their crime stories at Arlington Hts. Library

Michael Harvey and Jonathan Eig make it sound so easy. Harvey sends off his first novel to an agent and bingo, it gets published. And Eig finds a trove of unpublished papers for a biography of Al Capone, arguably the most famous man in Chicago history.

But each Chicago author had a career of solid reporting and writing before finding this "good luck."

And each will speak about his new book at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library.

Harvey, author of "The Third Rail" (Random House, $24.95), the third adventure of Chicago private eye Michael Kelly, will talk at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 12. Eig, writer of "Al Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster" (Simon & Schuster, $28), appears at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 17.

One of the facts that Harvey tucked into his three-sentence cover letter to the agent he found online was that he is a co-founder with Bill Kurtis of "Cold Case Files" for A&E TV. He produced what he calls the nonfiction "Law & Order" for almost a decade until 2006.

After finishing his fourth Kelly novel, Harvey will write a stand-alone book set in his native Boston.

"Boston and Chicago are very similar in a lot of ways - strong sports towns and strong neighborhood towns with ethnic neighborhoods," said Harvey, who has lived in Chicago for years. "Immigrant towns.

"But Chicago is much more welcoming. In Boston they've got to get to know you a little bit. Chicago is very open for a big city compared to almost any on the East Coast."

"The Third Rail" deals with murder on the CTA and chemical and biological crime, which Harvey thinks will eventually strike in a big U.S. city.

"Terror and murder merge into the same thing - a dead body in the subway. It's a biological weapon," he said.

But Harvey still rides the CTA.

"What can you do? It's hard to safeguard against these threats," he said. "It's the nature of our society - an open one. I don't even think about it, it's something to write about."

Harvey, who also owns the Hidden Shamrock on North Halsted insists his is an unplanned life.

"I never thought of any of these things - writing a novel, owning a bar. I wanted to do something fun when I grew up - fun and take chances and challenge myself. I have a lot more to learn about writing novels. It's a craft, a skill; I'm just trying to get better at it."

If you think you know everything there is to know about Al Capone, Jonathan Eig begs to differ. The Prohibition era gangster gets a rather sympathetic treatment in Eig's latest book.

The documents that were buried for 75 years were the papers of George E.Q. Johnson, the federal prosecutor in Capone's tax evasion case.

"(Johnson) was a quiet, unassuming sort of guy who drew no attention for himself. He was the man responsible for putting Capone away," said Eig.

What Eig found were wire taps and memorandums from the White House and Justice Department. Johnson had them in his private office, and his son sent them to a Nebraska college professor hoping to get a book written.

Here are some facts that Eig gleaned for his book:

President Herbert Hoover really wanted to get Capone and was "calling the shots" in the case that eventually sent the gangster to prison for tax evasion.

Johnson on the other hand "really felt like the case against him was weak," and he was afraid the jury would dismiss the case.

"Technically it was very hard to prove Capone had done anything illegal," Eig said. "They had a pretty good case for misdemeanor but weren't sure they could make a felony charge stick after years of investigating the most criminal man in America. They were very nervous."

Eig insists that Capone was not a monster.

"Prohibition made this guy. It was an immediately unpopular law.

"He was a man who really figured out how to game the system. He was a two-bit thug. He loved the attention. In the 1920s everybody wanted to be a star. We see that he's the first criminal to give news conferences and interviews to any reporter who knocked on his door."

Capone once famously said, "People call it bootleg. I call it giving the people what they want."

After writing the book Eig donated the important papers to the Chicago History Museum, but they might end up in the National Archives.

"This was my first gang book. It was a lot of fun. These characters were fascinating.

"Pickpockets and safe crackers become millionaires - so much money pouring through the underworld transformed their lives. Capone was more than a gangster - he changed the nature of this country," Eig declared.

"The government wanted to prove they could still enforce this law and make prohibition work."