Books for the Armchair Detective in Your Life

Steubenville Ohio, a mecca of murder was nicknamed "Little Chicago" with gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging running rampant for over one hundred years.

Steubenville's Water Street red-light district drew men from hundreds of miles away, as well as underage runaways. The white slave trade was rampant, and along with all the vice crimes, murders became a weekly occurrence. Law enforcement seemed to turn a blind eye, and cries of political corruption were heard in the state capital. This scenario replayed itself over and over again during the past century as mobsters and madams ruled and murders plagued the city and county at an alarming rate.

From the duel on Bloody Island to the "Missouri Miracle'? kidnapping and recovery of Shawn Hornbeck, Missouri has seen its share of notorious crimes. The Show-Me State was home to the first Western gunfight on the town square between Wild Bill Hickok and Dave Tutt. The three trials of the alleged murderer of Colonel Thomas Swope, the founder of Kansas City's Swope Park, enveloped the state. Residents also saw the killings within a few blocks of each other that inspired the songs "Stagger Lee'? and "Frankie and Johnny.'? Vicki Berger Erwin and James W. Erwin explore crimes, criminals, and victims from the violent history of the last two hundred years in the Show-Me State.

Even in law-abiding southwestern Michigan, the Eighteenth Amendment turned ordinary citizens into scofflaws and sparked unprecedented unrest. Betta Holloway reached her breaking point when her husband, a Portland cop, was shot pursuing a rumrunner. She relieved his pain with a neighbor's homebrew. As farmers across the region fermented their fruit to make a living, gangsters like Al Capone amassed extraordinary wealth. Baby Face Nelson came to Grand Haven and proved that he had no aptitude for robbing banks. Even before the Volstead Act passed, Battle Creek bad guy Adam "Pump" Arnold routinely broke all local prohibition laws--and every other law as well. Meanwhile, Carrie Nation hectored Michigan with her "hatchetations." Authors Norma Lewis and Christine Nyholm reveal how the Noble Experiment fueled a rowdy, roaring, decade-long party.