Imagine a policeman whose first beat in 1902 took him past the shop where Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane; who with his fellow officers risked life and limb amid the catastrophic 1913 flood that paralyzed Dayton, Ohio. Imagine that same man becoming Chief of Police and leading his… Read More »A MIDWEST COP WITH CHARISMA – IN 1939 by M. Ruth Myers
HFAC member Steve Bartholomew has just published Black Bart Reborn, another of his lively tales about the Old West, and Richard Sutton, one of our other members, has done an excellent interview with him about this book. First, a quick description of Black Bart Reborn: [box] When Black Bart left… Read More »Interview with the author of Black Bart Reborn
There is no such thing as history. Facts happen. The First World War happened. But who started it, and why – this is the story we tell ourselves later. It’s an opinion, it doesn’t exist outside the mind of the person writing that history. When I was a kid John… Read More »THE GREAT HISTORY HOAX by Colin Falconer
Throughout history, people have regarded the profession of public executioner much as they regarded that of the undertaker. From the point of view of the layperson, the undertaker’s job had a massive “ick” factor attached, usually originating from a superstitious dread of human corpses and, by extension, of the people… Read More »An Unsuitable Job for a Gentleman by Susanne Alleyn
My Victorian San Francisco Mystery series features Annie Fuller, a widow who runs a boarding house, supplements her income as a clairvoyant, and investigates crimes. She fights hard to maintain her economic independence, and this independent streak gets her in trouble and causes personal and romantic difficulties. This is fiction,… Read More »When Truth is Stranger than Fiction by M. Louisa Locke