WARNING: This letter reveals the story's ending!
One of the best parts about reading a good mystery is that you're never sure what's going to happen next. You get to imagine different paths the story might take. Will the hero dive into the pool of alligators or swing over them on a vine?
When I write, I do kind of the same thing. No, I don't swoop over a pool filled with snapping gators. But I do dream up new, imagined paths for people and events from history.
For example, Eliot Ness appears in NABBED! Ness was a famous crime fighter who brought down Al Capone, one of the biggest gangsters. But did Ness dress UP like Mang ze Magnifico and crack a rum-smuggling ring in North Carolina right after college as he did in this story? Probably not.
While I tried to be true to the investigative techniques of 1925, my main goal was to write an exciting mystery. The mansion, Judge, even the island—they all seem real to me and, hopefully, to you. But remember, they're inventions of my imagination.
I hope you had fun reading NABBED!—just don't use G. Codd's journal as study material for your next history test! or that pool of gators might look pretty good compared to your teacher's reaction.
Yours in time,