Peter M. Klismet’s book FBI DIARY: home grown terror starts in Colorado. On May 29, 1998 Cortez police officer Dale Dewain Claxton was filling in for another patrolman. They’d traded days so each could attend to personal affairs. It wasn’t anything unusual to do. This was done to help out a fellow officer and was quite routine. The story […]
Book Reviews
Peter Morrone, the Pope who quit
Peter Morrone (1215 – 1296), the Pope who quit, is better known as Pope Celestine V. The book by Jon Sweeney presents us with three powerful men. All skilled and stubborn. We discover how Peter Morrone’s life became entangled with Charles II of Anjou, the King of Naples. The other of course, was Cardinal Benedict […]
The blood on my hands by Shannon O’Leary
“I used pseudonyms in the book in order to protect my family. He was never charged despite the police knowing about his activity. The police investigations were case files and are not available to the public. People outside Australia would not be aware that many of the missing person files in NSW in the 1960s […]
A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read
“A Field of Darkness” by Cornelia Read is a book review by guest blogger Christa Miller. ** It is 2006: the year of the Turin Winter Olympics, creation of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) in Great Britain, beginning of the construction of the Freedom Tower in New York City, and a devastating terrorist attack in […]
Remembering Marion Miley (1914 – 1941)
Golf champion Marion Miley (27) and her mother Elsie Miley were killed during a robbery at the Lexington Country Club (Kentucky) on Sunday, September 28, 1941. Marion had helped set up a club dance. Around 2am, she heard her mother Elsie scream. Running down the stairs armed with a golf club, she faced three masked […]
Gun Alley by Kevin Morgan
Gun Alley by Kevin Morgan is about the murder of Alma Tirtschke (12) a.k.a. the “schoolgirl murder.” It is a cold case, a wrongful conviction, the rape-murder of a child, sloppy police work, jailhouse information, and a rush to judgment that led to the botched execution on April 24, 1922 of an innocent man. Collin Campbell […]
The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale
The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale describes the life and crime of Robert Allen Coombes (1882-1949). The book is a journalistic overview of the crime and trial that followed but it also explores human behaviour. Yes, Coombes killed his mother but what moved him isn’t as clear-cut as it seems in the beginning of the story. At […]
New book: Terror in Ypsilanti
A new book, Terror in Ypsilanti comes out this month about a string of murders in the late 60s. These murders took place in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area of Southeastern Michigan. Women between the ages of 13 and 21 were abducted, raped, beaten, and murdered. After they were stabbed or strangled, their bodies were sometimes mutilated […]
The Second Girl by David Swinson
The Second Girl by David Swinson is the first in a series featuring retired cop Frank Marr. He is damaged like the cop in Swinson’s first book “A Detailed Man.” Marr is worse though. Marr is a junkie. Even when faced with a chained scarcely clad teen his mind drifts. Whether it is the pain in […]
Unearthing a serial killer
Unearthing a serial killer by D. Paul and K.F. McMurray is a thin book but make no mistake. It is filled with details that make this book stay in your mind forever. The book tells the story of murder victims Gary Stymiloski, Beverly Capone, Antonella Mattina, and given the wallet content of the killer, maybe […]