Has more than its fair share of violence, sex, debauchery and reversals of fortune … But what emerges between the lines are stories of human suffering, stories of class struggle, stories that speak as much to the criminal mind as to the crime itself. – Sun Newspapers

More true tales of woe from Cleveland’s crime and disaster expert. The fifth book in John Stark Bellamy’s popular series delivers 26 accounts of Cleveland-area crimes and disasters from 1900 through 1950, including:

The depression-era Blue Book Murder, in which a swank Shaker Heights society party was interrupted by low-class thugs with deadly intentions;

Truculent barkeep Thomas Martin, whose idea of a good time was shooting the lunch buckets out of unsuspecting laborers’ hands as they came off their Whiskey Island shifts;

A strange international photo hoax in which Lakewood lad John May Warren became The boy with Hitler’s face ;

Sleepwalking Harry Krause, who dreamt one night of battling a gigantic snake but awoke to the real nightmare: he had strangled his own beloved mother in her bed;

The shocking murder of sweet 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz in her Garfield Heights bedroom–one of Cleveland’s most baffling murder mysteries ever;

And 20 more local true stories of courage, fear, deception, treachery, tragedy, violence, and guilt. Sometimes gruesome, often surprising, Bellamy’s tales are meticulously researched and delivered in a literate and entertaining style.