New Nonfiction
The Dalton Gang’s Final, Doomed Heists in the Twilight of the Old West
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In February 1891, hoping to help his brothers find steady work, Bill Dalton wrote a letter to the superintendent of the nearby Muller and Lux Ranch, having heard it was hiring. After that was confirmed, Bill borrowed a horse and saddle from one of his hired men for Grat and two saddles from his neighbors…
How a German Spy Chief Built a Smuggling Network out of a Mission to Install a Nazi King in Britain
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Walter Schellenberg had few redeeming personal attributes and could easily be characterized as just another career Nazi. He owed his lofty position as head of German intelligence to the patronage of Heinrich Himmler, and he remained personally loyal to the Reichsführer until the end. Schellenberg was not a thinker. He was an enforcer, career gossip,…
How Much Do We Really Know About Charles Dickens?
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The weather has been exceptionally mild of late but in this Christmas season every party demands a good blaze and good cheer. What with the fire and the punch bowl and mounting excitement, they are all already too warm; the children pink-cheeked, the ladies, both young and older, hectically flushed. Mrs Dickens, so near her…
The Secret History of John le Carré’s Career in the Intelligence Services
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‘People believe what they want to believe,’ wrote David to one of his lovers. ‘ALWAYS.’ he was referring to the ‘revelation’ that Graham Greene had continued working for British intelligence into his seventies. ‘No good me telling them that GG was far too drunk to remember anything, & that his residual connections with the Brit…
The Political Assassination That Transformed Africa, the UN, and the CIA
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Nothing much happens in Mélin, a picturesque village of little over a thousand people about an hour’s drive from Brussels. If the sleepy town has a claim to fame, it is that many of its buildings — farmhouses, the church and the vicarage, the restaurant —are built from a chalky sandstone unique to the region.…
On the Rise, and Fall, and Uncontainable Rebellion of Cyberpunk
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There once lived a man who was naked, raving, and could not be bound. According to the Gospel: “He tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.” It turns out (spoiler) he was possessed. The demons were exorcised and cast out of the man. Lacking a human host, the demons possessed an…
An Appreciation of Gardening Detectives
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Gardening detectives, both professional and amateur, abound in crime fiction and they appeared early on. Wilkie Collins introduced the first horticulturally inclined investigator in The Moonstone. The serialized story first appeared in the United Kingdom in January 1868 in Charles Dickens’s periodical All the Year Round and simultaneously in Harper’s Weekly in the United States.…
On Crime and Its Discontents
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The first crime was the most defining moment in the history of the human. It was not Cain’s murder. That was defining too. But the first crime began in the realm of the numinous. It could only be deemed an act of spirit. Philosophers and religionists and mystics struggle to define it. The closest anyone…
The Cowboy Detective, Undercover and in Danger Among the Texas Desperados
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The following is an excerpt from Nathan Ward’s new book about Charlie Siringo: Son of the Old West, now available from Atlantic Monthly Press. ___________________________________ Along the snowy road from Cheyenne toward Fort Douglas, the roundup season was well finished. This was the time of year when the Round-up Number 5 saloon held on to…
The Cowboy as Detective: Finding Charlie Siringo’s West
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When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid finally came to my boyhood mall, I saw it three times, wondering in the dark about the unnamed lawmen chasing the Wild Bunch outlaws around the West, the drumbeat of their horses’ hooves drawing Butch’s exasperated line, “Who are those guys?” One who chased the gang, I would…