The biggest obstacle I faced in writing Swamp Monster was wringing a confession from Dick Brewer. Dick Brewer is a narcissistic sociopath, a quality that enabled him to cheerfully lie, manipulate, and maneuver throughout the book. It has been pounded into my head at multiple Writers’ Police Academy sessions that narcissistic sociopaths like Dick are immune to standard interrogation techniques. Simply put, you can’t play on remorse they don’t feel.
I turned to Peter’s virtual uncles, fellow mystery authors Nick Russell and Billy Kring, who are retired, old-school law enforcement. I’m still shaking my head over their answer, but that didn’t stop me from using it.
My descriptions of Mill Creek come from personal experience, both from having a studio overlooking the creek in the eighties, and from Mill Creek Yacht Club events. Commodore’s trash free zone is a thing.
If you are one of the thousand people who have traveled the creek on one of his float trips, you’ll know I narrowed the creek where the cottonwood fell. I hope you’ll forgive me. If I hadn’t, Terry and Steve would have paddled around the tree and we would have no story (And for anyone who’s wondering, MCYC no longer launches from the Millvale garage.)
Pete Schmidt, George Remus, Red Masterson and the Cleveland Four are all part of Sin City history. After I took the Newport Gangster Tour, I went down rabbit holes looking for details to make Mal’s story real. There were discrepancies between various sources, but Pete Schmidt’s battle with Moe Dalitz is well documented. I fudged the timeline to allow Mal time to become a stage magician before Dalitz resumed his attacks on the Beverly Hills.
Marvelous Malachi is a product of my imagination, as is his role in the conflict between Schmidt and Dalitz. To the best of my knowledge, that conflict ended when Pete sold to Dalitz a few months after Mal’s fictional disappearance. In my mind, Mal’s disappearance was the final straw.
I found no record of Cab Calloway performing at the BH but he was local and it would have been strange if he hadn’t.
And while I do not know if anyone ever amputated a limb with a circular saw, Rose’s gunpowder cauterization is a historical fact.
I visited the roadside Elvis museum and the gas station selling vials of Elvis’s sweat on the fifth anniversary of Elvis’s death. Graceland was overrun with the faithful that day, so the closest I got to the King’s grave was a trip through the Graceland parking lot.
I originally planned to take weeks to identify Not Elvis. Then I signed on to the Ohio Missing Persons database and realized Peter would solve that part of the mystery in less than an hour.
The young woman missing from Toledo is real. I left out her name—Cynthia Jane Anderson—because Peter stumbling across a possible connection to Lia would have been a complication too far. Still, Cynthia’s story is so bizarre, I had to indulge myself and include it.
I’ve been a fan of Ruth’s proprietor David Tape since he ran Mullane’s Parkside Cafe downtown in the nineties. It’s my favorite restaurant for special meals. And as soon as this book is published, I plan to treat myself.