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OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody “Golden Age” of Hollywood

by Joan Renner

SYNOPSIS – No Hollywood script can compare to the terror of the 37 true tales in OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody “Golden Age” of Hollywood!

In this gripping historical account, expert crime historian Joan Renner explores the shadowy world of fame and crime during Hollywood’s most glamorous era. As Los Angeles transformed into the epicenter of film, it also became a haven for notorious criminals and mobsters, weaving a complex tapestry of allure and danger that is sure to intrigue.

Renner brings to life stories that are more thrilling than fiction, including harrowing LAPD showdowns, dark dealings behind the studio gates, and tragic fates of luminaries whose off-screen lives were as dramatic as their on-screen personas. She delves into infamous episodes, such as the shocking case of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, accused of “accidentally” crushing to death a young actress beneath his enormous weight as he raped her, and other lesser-known, but equally hair-raising stories of actors brought down by scandal and corruption.

OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS offers a profound and enlightening look at Hollywood’s dual nature, illustrating how its seductive glitter was deeply entangled with its sinister impulses. This book is essential for anyone fascinated by how America’s “City of Dreams” became a stage for some of the most gripping dramas of the twentieth century.

Step into the Prohibition Era with Joan Renner as she reveals the hidden crimes and undying ambition behind Hollywood’s shimmering façade.

MY THOUGHTS – This collection of true crime stories is different and new for me. I enjoyed reading these stories before bed, as I could stop at the end of one. I was amazed at the misinformation that was allowed in the papers back then, ruining people’s lives too.

PUBLISHER – WildBlue Press – 315 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – May 14th, 2024

MY RATING – 5/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Joan Renner, is a writer and social historian. Her book, THE FIRST WITH THE LATEST! : AGGIE UNDERWOOD, THE LOS ANGELES HERALD, AND THE SORDID CRIMES OF A CITY was selected by The L.A. Weekly as one of the top ten true crimes books about the city. She contributed to the Los Angeles Times bestseller LAPD ‘53, written by James Ellroy and Glynn Martin.

Her work has appeared in true crime anthologies, and she has written for Los Angeles Magazine. Joan is an expert on historic Los Angeles crime and has given presentations to private groups and professional organizations. She was an invited speaker at three annual meetings of the Southern California Association of Fingerprint Officers.

Since 2009, she has appeared on over 60 true crime TV shows and podcasts: City of Angels, City of Death; Deadly Women; Evil Twins; Evil Kin; Ice Cold Blood; Buried in the Backyard; Hollywood & Crime, and many others. Deranged L.A. Crimes, her blog, debuted in December 2012 and covers historic misdeeds in the City of Angels.

Her current book, OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS offers a profound and enlightening look at Hollywood’s dual nature, illustrating how its seductive glitter was deeply entangled with its sinister impulses. This book is essential for anyone fascinated by how America’s “City of Dreams” became a stage for some of the most gripping dramas of the twentieth century.

When she’s not writing or researching true crime, Joan volunteers at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Museum as an archivist and historian.

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Book Review ARC ~ THE LAST STORY

The Last Story: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist in Las Vegas

by Arthur Kane

SYNOPSIS – THE LAST STORY: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist in Las Vegas is an exclusive deep dive into a chilling true tale of sex, ambition, retribution, and homicide.

Jeff German, a veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter, was no stranger to controversy or the danger of his work. For more than four decades, he wrote stories relentlessly confronting the mob, corrupt politicians, and greedy bureaucrats. As a result, he was often threatened—enough that he and his friend and fellow investigative reporter, Arthur Kane, sometimes joked about reporting on these threats if they were ever acted upon.

Then, in the spring of 2022, German received a tip about abuses at a little-known county office. His subsequent investigation unearthed a scandalous, sexually incriminating video of a rising politician. The resulting stories in the Review-Journal ended the man’s political aspirations.

Less than six months later, on September 3, German’s lifeless body was discovered outside his home with multiple stab wounds. His dedicated newsroom colleagues, including Kane, vowed to find the killer. In doing so, they exposed the true depths of corruption and malice in Sin City.

Meanwhile, the police struggled to identify a suspect until they released a photo of the suspect’s vehicle to the media. That tip led them to none other than the small-time politician, who was subsequently arrested and now faces life in prison, pending the outcome of his trial in August 2024.

In THE LAST STORY, Kane delivers an intense narrative of courage, betrayal, and the unrelenting quest for justice.

MY THOUGHTS – This is a good read about the murder of investigative journalist Jeff German. It’s written by fellow journalist and friend Arthur Kane. The ARC had a lot of annoying issues with missing words and extra words, like calling the victim “the German”. Hopefully the end product will be perfect.

PUBLISHER – WildBlue Press – 298 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – April 30th, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – I have been a writer, investigative reporter, and editor for more than three decades. Currently, I manage the investigative unit as an Investigation Editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where I have worked since 2016.

In Vegas, I broke stories about waste and corruption at the county’s tourism and visitors’ authority that led to criminal charges against top officials. An investigation of the state Dental Board resulted in the top two officials being fired. Stories on an elected constable using county money to gamble led to his indictment and a plea. And a series on police misconduct exposed officers who were kept on the job and were even promoted despite repeated, sustained internal affairs complaints.

I previously worked at the Denver Post, KMGH-TV, The Des Moines Register, and Watchdog.org. Stories there resulted in changes in state law and indictments of corrupt officials. My work has garnered two duPont-Columbia awards, a Peabody, a national Emmy, two SPJ Sigma Delta Chi honors as well as numerous state and regional awards. The Nevada Press Association named me Nevada’s Outstanding Reporter of the Year in 2020 and 2022.

In 2022, I worked closely with Jeff German when he was slain outside his Las Vegas house. German had written a series of stories on the public administrator’s office, and Public Administrator Robert Telles was soon arrested for his murder. The whole remaining investigative team and I jumped on the story, exposing Telles’ history of inappropriate and abusive conduct, additional potential corruption, and failures by the county to protect his employees.

Having been friends with Jeff since I started at the RJ, I decided his life and death were an important topic worthy of a book. The story shows the increasing dangers of journalists as well as the power of local newspapers to force positive changes in the community and government.

When I’m not at my keyboard, I enjoy mountain biking, playing poker, attending concerts with friends, collecting rock memorabilia, traveling, and hiking with any dogs we may have rescued. My wife and I live in Henderson.

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Book Review ARC ~ EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE

Every Contact Leaves a Trace: My Life as a Crime Scene Investigator

by Jo Ward

SYNOPSIS –For most people, dead bodies are horrifying. They are the physical representation of everything we’re afraid of – our own mortality, the unknown, the inevitability and lack of dignity of the end.

But for Jo Ward, a dead body is absolutely fascinating…

For Jo, a normal day’s work involves getting up-close and personal with the dead – generally the murdered dead – exploring every inch of their battered and bloody bodies and finding the clues that will lead the police to their killers.

Every scene teaches her something new. Every murder is a chance to obtain justice for the dead. Because every contact leaves a trace… Jo Ward is part of a generation of pioneering women who lead forensic investigation in the UK. Her investigations into high-profile crimes – murder, domestic killings, infanticide, and rape – have been the subject of a BBC Two television documentary, Forensics – the Real CSI.

If you’re a fan of Sue Black and Patricia Wiltshire, Every Contact Leaves a Trace is for you. It’s a rare glimpse into a formidable woman and the world of forensics, chronicling some of Jo’s toughest and most groundbreaking cases and offering insight into how she copes despite seeing the most shocking excesses of humanity.

MY THOUGHTS – I found this to be an informative and entertaining read, detailing the British author’s career in forensics. Although gory at times, which is to be expected. From how she got started and advanced through the ranks. She’s lucky enough to have a very supportive husband who was understanding when she faced challenges at work and at home. I always enjoy figuring out what some British terms mean when they differ from ours.

PUBLISHER – Aurum – 272pages

PUBLICATION DATE – June 25th, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Jo Ward is a senior forensics specialist in the West Midlands. She investigates high profile crimes, including murder, domestic killings, attempted murder, infanticide, and rape. Jo has been working in crime scene investigation for nearly twenty-six years. Her life and work have been the topic of a BBC Two television documentary, Forensics – the Real CSI.

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Book Review ARC ~ CARRIE CAROLYN COCO

Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable

by Sarah Gerard

SYNOPSIS – Acclaimed author Sarah Gerard turns her keen observational eye and penetrating prose to the 2016 murder of her friend Carolyn Bush, examining the multi-faceted reasons for her death―personal and societal, avoidable and inevitable―as “nuanced and subtly intimate” (NPR) as her lauded essay collection, Sunshine State.

On the night of September 28, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends and family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong?

This is the question that has plagued acclaimed author Sarah Gerard and driven her obsessive pursuit to understand this horrific tragedy. In Sarah’s exploration of Carolyn’s life and death, she spent thousands of hours interviewing Carolyn and Render’s friends and family, poring over court documents and news media, reading obscure writings and internet posts, and attending Carolyn’s memorials and Render’s trial.

What emerged from Sarah’s relentless instinct to follow a story and its characters to their darkest ends is a book that is at once a striking homage to Carolyn’s life, a chilling excavation of a brutal crime, and a captivating whydunit with a shocking conclusion.

MY THOUGHTS – After losing her friend Carolyn in 2016 to a shocking murder at age 25, the author spent years digging into the story. This book is the result of all those interviews she undertook searching for answers and it includes the trial and its outcome. Very in depth and thorough.

PUBLISHER – Zando – 368 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – July 9th, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, which was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Binary Star, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Can’t Help it if We’re From Florida, and One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. She lives in New York City with her true love, the writer Patrick Cottrell. Find her at Sarah-Gerard.com.

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Book Review ARC ~ THE TALENTED MRS. MANDELBAUM

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Crime Boss

by Margalit Fox

SYNOPSIS – America’s first great organized-crime lord was a lady—a nice Jewish mother named Fredericka Mandelbaum.


In 1850, an impoverished 25-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum traveled to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a widow with four children, a fixture of high society, and an admired philanthropist. What had enabled a woman on the margins of American life to ascend from tenement poverty to immense wealth?

In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum, as she was known, had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a successful criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (the equivalent of nearly $300 million in today’s money) had passed through her modest haberdashery shop on the Lower East Side. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime in New York City” by the New York Times, she planned, financed, and profited from robberies of cash, gold, diamonds, and silk throughout the city and across the United States.

But Fredericka Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the formerly scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of New York’s foremost bank robbers, housebreakers, and shoplifters, and neatly bribing anyone who stood in her way, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum paints a vivid image of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with delightful rogues, capitalist power brokers, and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all of whom straddled the line between underworld enterprise and the realm of “legitimate” commerce. Combining deep historical research with the narrative flair for which she is celebrated, Margalit Fox tells the unforgettable story of a once-famous, now-forgotten heroine, a tale that exemplifies the cherished rags-to-riches narrative of Victorian America while simultaneously upending it altogether.

MY THOUGHTS – This was a very involved story about “Marm” Mandelbaum and her long successful career as a big-time fence in mid 1800s New York. For several decades, she wielded heady power as she ran her business and amassed a fortune. Mrs. Mandelbaum had an amazing head for crime, and came up with many ways to organize it into a business.

PUBLISHER – Random House – 336 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – July 2nd, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Margalit Fox originally trained as a cellist and a linguist before pursuing journalism. As a senior writer in The New York Times’s Obituary News Department, she wrote the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. Winner of the William Saroyan Prize for Literature and author of four previous nonfiction books, The Confidence Men, Conan Doyle for the Defense, The Riddle of the Labyrinth, and Talking Hands, Fox lives in Manhattan with her husband.

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Book Review ~ I WILL RUIN YOU

I Will Ruin You: The Twisted Truth Behind the Kit Martin Murder Trail

by Emilio Corsetti III

SYNOPSIS – Did the State of Kentucky convict an innocent man?

Moments before boarding a passenger flight on 11 May 2019 as the first officer, pilot Christian “Kit” Martin, a former army ranger, was arrested by a swarm of heavily armed officers for the murders of three of his neighbors. The arrest captured global attention as Martin’s mugshot, clad in a pilot’s uniform, spread across the internet, sparking a media firestorm with headlines such as “Monster in the Cockpit.”

A combat helicopter pilot, Kit Martin had seen his life unravel after seeking a divorce. His wife’s threatening words, “If you leave me, I will ruin your life …,” overheard by his daughter, seemed to have become a grim reality, escalating to a court-martial and culminating in a high-stakes murder trial at which he was convicted.

I WILL RUIN YOU: The Twisted Truth Behind the Kit Martin Murder Trial delves into the complex circumstances behind Martin’s story. It looks beyond the sensational headlines and legal turmoil into the heart of this controversial case.

With an investigative journalist’s eye, author Emilio Corsetti III presents the facts of the crime that led to the arrest and the extraordinary lengths used to secure a conviction in this unforgettable true crime page-turner.

MY THOUGHTS – This is an amazing story with many twists to it. It seems it should be impossible for many things that happen in it, but they do, again and again. It’s scary how easy it appears to be that even without any actual evidence, a person can be convicted of murder and given life in prison. I hope to hear more about this case in the future.

PUBLISHER – WildBlue Press – 420 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – March 26th, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Emilio Corsetti III is a retired airline pilot and author. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Multimedia Producer, and Professional Pilot magazine. In addition, Emilio has appeared as an aviation expert on the show Studio B with Shepard Smith and in the MSNBC documentary Why Planes Crash: Brace for Impact. Emilio is the author of the book 35 Miles From Shore: The Ditching and Rescue of ALM Flight 980 which tells the true story of an airline ditching in the Caribbean Sea and the efforts to rescue those who survived. Emilio’s latest release Scapegoat: A Flight Crew’s Journey from Heroes to Villains to Redemption tells the true story of an airline crew wrongly blamed for causing a near-fatal accident and the captain’s decades-long battle to clear his name. Emilio is a graduate of St. Louis University Parks College of Aviation. He and his wife, Lynn, reside in Dallas, Texas.

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Book Review ARC ~ THE GABARDINE GANG

The Gabardine Gang: Power and Betrayal in Hartford’s Mob Scene

by Kevin B. DiBacco

SYNOPSIS – THE GABARDINE GANG: Power and Betrayal in Hartford’s Mob Scene by Kevin B. DiBacco is a riveting tale of crime, family, and redemption in the gritty underworld of the 1950s and 1960s Hartford, Connecticut.

Geno DiBacco led the notorious Gabardine Gang, a small-time mob that ruled the city. Geno’s son, Kevin, takes you on a visceral journey through his childhood and adolescence, revealing the gang’s illegal activities, his father’s dramatic descent, and the harsh realities of organized crime, offering a unique perspective on a world often glamorized in Hollywood.

This book offers a profound look at the DiBacco family’s struggles amid racial tensions and the personal costs of a life entwined with crime. Geno’s battle with gambling addiction and the impact of his choices on his family paint a vivid picture of a man and a community at a crossroads.

THE GABARDINE GANG explores the intricate dynamics of family, resilience, and personal redemption. Kevin’s authentic storytelling immerses readers in a world where every twist and turn resonates with genuine emotion.

Don’t miss your chance to experience this raw and unfiltered exploration of a bygone era.

MY THOUGHTS – I wasn’t a fan of this work. The writing was awkward and a bit stilted to me, and in need of talented editing. It was difficult for me to stay interested all the way through the book.

PUBLISHER – WildBlue Press – 206 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – March 12th, 2024

MY RATING – 3/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Unlike many self-proclaimed expert authors, Kevin DiBacco writes from experience. By 23, he underwent 6 knee operations and back surgery, showing resilience facing adversity early on. During military service as an Air Force Marksman, a devastating injury led him to pursue filmmaking.

As a Disabled Veteran, Kevin encountered fresh hurdles but pressed on, determined to produce and direct. Despite a 2nd back surgery delaying his 1st film and brain surgery in 2011 threatening his dream, Kevin’s spirit remained unyielding.

With over 500 productions, 600 TV commercials, 20 music videos and 5 globally released feature films in his 38 year film career, Kevin is eager to share his knowledge and insights.

He has published literary works including “Artists Sales Kit“, “HYSOMETRICS“, “Indie Filmmaking in the Real World“, “The Gabardine Gang“, and “The Life Book Field Manual“. With more on the way.

Kevin’s achievements as a Director/Author demonstrate remarkable skill and dedication. Despite setbacks, he never gives up. For more on Kevin DiBacco, visit Kevin DiBacco dot com.

Published by Urban Viking Origin, UK and Viking House MM.

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Book Review ARC ~ EVERYWHERE I LOOK

Everywhere I Look

by Ona Gritz

SYNOPSIS – In 1982, twenty-five-year-old Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered, along with her husband and infant son. Ill equipped for the horror of that violence and the enormity of her loss, Angie’s sister Ona, a college sophomore, felt numb. She also felt deeply ashamed of her inability to grieve.


But shame, like her sister’s absence, was something Ona knew well. For as long as she could remember, she’d felt ashamed of being their parents’ blatantly favored child. The disabled daughter they’d coddled and protected while they alternately punished and neglected Angie and finally sent her away.


It wasn’t until thirty years after the murders, both their parents gone and Ona nearly twice the age Angie was allowed to reach, that she developed the courage and a detective’s compulsion to learn all she could about her sister’s turbulent life and unthinkable death. The result is Everywhere I Look, a beautifully rendered memoir of sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. A profoundly moving reckoning and love letter.

MY THOUGHTS – Such a lovingly written memoir of a family with much dysfunction. Ona’s mother seemed to treat her so well, and her “adopted” sister Angie/Andrea so coldly growing up. Ona reflects on that dynamic, along with the tragedy that engulfed her sister’s family in 1982. Along the way she learns so much about why things may have happened, along with many things she didn’t know. Very insightful story I flew through in a day.

PUBLISHER – Apprentice House Press – 238 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – April 16th, 2024

MY RATING – 5/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Ona Gritz writes memoir, essays, and poetry for adults, verse novels for teens, and fiction for children. Her memoir, Everywhere I Look, will be released on April 16th from Apprentice House Press of Loyola University.

Ona’s nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Utne Reader, Brevity, Parents, The Rumpus, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays and A Best Life Story in Salon.

Ona’s poetry collection Geode was a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems can be found in Ploughshares, The Bellevue Literary Review, One Art, Catamaran Literary Reader, Stone Gathering, SWWIM, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. In 2020, she won The Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project.

Ona’s 2023 novel for children, August Or Forever, was a Reader’s Choice and Wishing Shelf finalist in middle grade fiction.

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Book Review ARC ~ THE SERIAL KILLER’S APPRENTICE

The Serial Killer’s Apprentice

by Katherine Ramsland & Tracy Ullman

SYNOPSIS – A psychological examination of the blurred line between victim and accomplice—and how a killer can be created

Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. was only fourteen when he first became entangled with serial rapist and murderer Dean Corll in 1971. Fellow Houston, Texas, teenager David Brooks had already been ensnared by the charming older man, bribed with cash to help lure boys to Corll’s home. When Henley unwittingly entered the trap, Corll evidently sensed he’d be of more use as a second accomplice than another victim. He baited Henley with the same deal he’d given Brooks: $200 for each boy they could bring him.

Henley didn’t understand the full extent of what he had signed up for at first. But once he started, Corll convinced him that he had crossed the line of no return and had to not only procure boys but help kill them and dispose of the bodies, as well. When Henley first took a life, he lost his moral base. He felt doomed. By the time he was seventeen, he’d helped with multiple murders and believed he’d be killed, too. But on August 8, 1973, he picked up a gun and shot Corll. When he turned himself in, Henley showed police where he and Brooks had buried Corll’s victims in mass graves. Twenty-eight bodies were recovered—most of them boys from Henley’s neighborhood—making this the worst case of serial murder in America at the time. The case reveals gross failures in the way cops handled parents’ pleas to look for their missing sons and how law enforcement possibly protected a larger conspiracy.

The Serial Killer’s Apprentice tells the story of Corll and his accomplices in its fullest form to date. It also explores the concept of “mur-dar” (the predator’s instinct for exploitable kids), current neuroscience about adolescent brain vulnerabilities, the role of compartmentalization, the dynamic of a murder apprenticeship, and how tales like Henley’s can aid with early intervention. Despite his youth and cooperation, Henley went to trial and received six life sentences. He’s now sixty-five and has a sense of perspective about how adult predators can turn formerly good kids into criminals. Unexpectedly, he’s willing to talk. This book is his warning and the story of the unspeakable evil and sorrow that befell Houston in the early 1970s.

MY THOUGHTS – This book by Tracy Ullman and Katherine Ramsland follows up on the infamous killings by Dean Corll in the Candyman Murders of Texas in 1972 and 1973. It’s a more in-depth look at the killings and the roles that David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. played in luring and killing teen boys. It remains a shocking tale that would never have been ended if it weren’t for Henley’s killing of Corll, and his statements to authorities about where bodies were buried.

PUBLISHER – Crime Ink – 336 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – April 16th, 2024

MY RATING – 5/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR –

Tracy Ullman is a documentary producer, director, and writer in New York City. She has produced dozens of non-fiction television programs for Discovery Networks, Oxygen, AETN Networks, and PBS. Her most recent production is a six-part limited documentary series about serial murderer John Wayne Gacy and the new discoveries made in his case for NBC’s Peacock streaming service.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, where she is the Assistant Provost. She has appeared as an expert in criminal psychology on more than 200 crime documentaries, podcasts and magazine shows. She is an executive producer of Murder House Flip and has consulted for CSI, Bones, and The Alienist. She has authored more than 1,500 articles and 69 books, including Inside the Minds of Sexual Predators, The Forensic Science of CSI, The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds, How to Catch a Killer, and Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, The BTK Killer. Ramsland was co-executive producer for the Wolf Entertainment/A&E four-part documentary based on the years she has spent talking with Rader.

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Book Review ARC ~ SHACKLED

Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and a Town that Looked Away

by Candy J. Cooper

SYNOPSIS- Here is the explosive story of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a judicial justice miscarriage that sent more than 2,500 children and teens to a for-profit detention center while two judges lined their pockets with cash, as told by Candy J. Cooper, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist.

In the early 2000s, Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania were known as no-nonsense judges. Juveniles who showed up in their courtrooms faced harsh words and even harsher sentencing. In the post-Columbine era, many people believed that was just what the county needed to ensure its children and teens stayed on the straight and narrow path. But as more and more children faced shocking sentences for seemingly benign crimes, and a newly built for-profit detention center filled up further and further, a sinister pattern of abuses and bribery emerged. Through extensive research and original reporting leading into contemporary times, award-winning journalist Candy J. Cooper tells the story of a scandal that the Juvenile Law Center calls “one of the largest and most serious violations of children’s rights in the history of the American legal system.”

MY THOUGHTS – This story is so disgusting about an egregious violation of the trust of the people. A pair of judges and some of their cronies built for-profit detention centers for juveniles, then manipulated the system to have juveniles sent to their jails. They ordered underlings to keep them filled. I was amazed at the rules they flouted to make it all happen, not to mention the 2+ million in kickbacks they enjoyed. In deliberately changing all these children’s lives, they did irreparable damage to most of them.

PUBLISHER – Calkins Creek – 192 pages

PUBLICATION DATE – April 2nd, 2024

MY RATING – 4/5 STARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Candy J. Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. She has been a staff writer for four newspapers, including The Detroit Free Press and The San Francisco Examiner. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Columbia Journalism Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other publications. She is the author of Poisoned Water: How The Citizens of Flint, Michigan Fought For Their Lives and Warned the Nation, published by Bloomsbury.