Books for the Armchair Detective in Your Life

Author Alan Brown leads readers on a stomach-churning turn through Florida's dark side .

Florida sunshine beckons, but in can be unrelenting, too. And in the shadows, tragedy strikes. Ted Bundy leads a cast of serial killers who wrought havoc on the state. Storms spin onto its shores with landscape altering fury. Sharks lurk in the sea, and snakes and alligators lie wait in the swamps. Gangsters like Al Capone hit Miami Beach for a respite, but gangsters like Al Capone take no breaks from their trade. A woman spontaneously bursts into flames in St. Petersburg. Anthrax claims a life in Palm Beach. The Bermuda Triangle disappears vessels off the coast. Indeed, Florida knows boundless leisure, but it's just as familiar with catastrophe .

Join author and Miami native Avi Bash as he exposes the life and activities of Organized Crime in Miami in the 20th century.

While other cities are credited for birthing and honing the legendary crime figures who inevitably influenced and shaped their susceptible surroundings and culture, Miami is where the Mob, like many American citizens, often turned when seeking vacation, vice, or a new beginning. Dating back to the first quarter of the 20th century, resourceful gangsters from across the nation recognized the profitable business opportunities Miami could provide with its booming population, perfect year-round climate, cooperative law enforcement, and mutual understanding among otherwise rival gangs. The promise of an open city, free from familiar encumbrances and restrictions, prompted eager mobsters from around the country to migrate south and trade in their suits and fedoras for swim trunks and flip-flops. Organized Crime in Miami examines the considerable yet heavily underpublicized involvement of the American Mafia in South Florida and its lasting impact on the community through their business activities, both illegal and within the confines of the law.

More than four decades after it occurred, the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley remains notorious… and unsolved.

The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her white mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities. Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk. Author Elizabeth Randall puts the rumors to rest through research culled from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation and interviews.

In 1880, there was a brutal murder in sunny paradise. This is the story of greed, violence, and a sensational trial that still captures the public's imagination even well after 100 years have passed.

Archie Newton stepped off the river steamer in 1880 with a letter of introduction and a secret, the young man hoping for a new life on the Florida frontier. Samuel McMillan was a miserly Sanford bachelor who carried large sums of "greenbacks" and trusted no one. One would think that since the ambitious Newton had his eye on purchasing McMillan's profitable orange grove, he wouldn't be foolish enough to do something reckless, but on his way back from Newton's home one evening, McMillan disappeared, and he wasn't seen again until his headless, mutilated corpse was pulled from a nearby lake. Newton's trial was sensational and the evidence gruesome, and local legends grew of a headless ghost rising from the lake, but was the young man in the courtroom innocent or guilty? Author Andrew Fink chronicles the twists and turns of this shocking story.

A gay love triangle, drug deals, and a murder. Just another night in West Palm Beach in 1984?

Jeffrey Heagerty was like most young gay nineteen-year-olds in South Florida in the 1980s, commonly finding himself and his friends at the popular Kevin's Cabaret in West Palm Beach on Saturday nights. On one of those Saturday nights in 1984, Jeff vanished from the club, leaving his friends behind even though he was their ride home. His body was found in a canal the next morning and his car was missing, only to be found a month later, abandoned on the other side of town. Rumors of a love triangle, drug dealings and sexual encounters snarled police efforts at solving the case. The investigation stagnated and the case grew cold until the solution came from two unexpected sources: overlooked details in police photographs of Jeff's car and a mysterious letter from an inmate in the Palm Beach County Jail.

Put on your life vest and head out for this exciting, entertaining history of Florida's most-fascinating smugglers!

Think you're a smuggler? With that box of Cuban cigars or those unclaimed duty-free souvenirs from last summer's trip to Paris? Untaxed and untraced commerce-call it contraband-is a trillion-dollar-per-year global business. New technologies to discover and curb smuggling are met by equally well-equipped perpetrators, determined to stay below the radar.

With its long coastline, hundreds of remote landing strips and airports clogged with sun-seeking tourists, Florida is a superhighway of smuggling. It is easy to move illegal goods like weapons, drugs, slaves, exotic birds and flowers; all while avoiding the best efforts of U.S. and international customs authorities.

Who does this smuggling? Well one Florida governor and the wife of another, for starters. Hardscrabble commercial fishermen, Spanish explorers, Mafia mobsters, crew chiefs for fruit pickers, respected attorneys, just about everybody in Florida is a smuggler.

Smuggling touches every major episode in Florida's history; it's discovery and settlement, the Seminole Wars , and the Civil War were shaped by smugglers. The state's repeated land booms-including today's-are heavily influenced by smuggler profits. Today's business economy is warped by the manipulation of smugglers laundering their profits.

Stan Zimmerman means neither to vilify nor glorify these entrepreneurs. Nor does he intend to leave any stoned unturned or suitcase unopened. With stories of drug runners and prostitute pushers alongside the exploits and follies of Florida's elite, we are able to see why throughout its long history, Florida has always been a true smuggler's paradise.

Prohibition is recognized as the most unpopular law in US history. It was so unpopular at the time that some Floridians weren't all too keen on obeying it. Learn how it was instigated by small town Protestants who believed that newer immigrants living in big cities were immoral because of their emphatic use of alcohol. Prohibition bred corruption, defiance of the law, and hypocrisy as illegal bootlegging, moonshining and rum running replaced legitimate taxpaying industries. Florida actually voted state-wide Prohibition into law before the dreaded 18th amendment and was the only state to elect a governor from the Prohibition Party. Florida's Bill McCoy "The Real McCoy" founded Rum Row and became an international celebrity as he made a mockery of the U.S. Coast Guard's inability to squelch his innovative rum running operations. Al Capone, the infamous gangster, vacationed in Florida while his henchmen perpetrated the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Many virtually unknown stories of tragic killings in Florida during Prohibition are also recounted.

Alva Hunt and Hugh Gant began their infamous "careers" fencing automobile parts as the Florida land boom became a bust. After doing hard time in state jails, they emerged as bank robbers and embarked on a crime spree across the Deep South. In the end they were captured and served time in Leavenworth, Alcatraz and other penitentiaries. Their reign was one of terror for Florida and many Southern states. Their story reflects an intriguing period in Florida's own history--the Depression era and the desperate days when Southern gangsters were armed, notorious and deadly.