A hint of the plot David Elliott, adventurous high school junior, stumbles upon the murdered body of his barber, Benny Angelone. Days later David narrowly escapes death at the hands of an unknown assailant who believes David heard or saw something that will send the barber’s killer to the chair. He tracks young Elliott’s every move, looking for the moment to strike. But what does Elliott know? What did the barber know which signed his death warrant? In a desperate race against time David must find the answers or be killed. His daring efforts involve him in one of the most famous crimes of the 20th century and bring him - and the reader - to the cliff’s edge with a relentless killer.
What The Barber Knew, Amazon.com/Kindle Select. The germination of the plot for What The Barber Knew sprouted from a boyhood memory in Erie, Pennsylvania. Early one summer morning, I left our house and walked two blocks to a bluff on the shore of Lake Erie. A neighbor, Mr. W., a retiree from the General Electric plant, soon joined me. As we idly watched the waves break on the narrow beach below, the body of a man rolled out of the surf. Mr. W. told me to go home. Shocked and scared, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Before the body was identified, it was reported the man had been shot, execution-style.
Not many days later, I walked to Louis G.’s Barbershop for my monthly haircut. The shop was closed, and a sign on the door announced the reason: Mr. Louis G. had died. We kids were certain that the body in the lake was our barber. There were rumors that Louis the Barber had been a player in the numbers racket. Apparently, Louis had cheated the bosses, and suffered the fatal consequence.
When I decided to write a murder mystery in 2011, the plot was loosely based on the fate of my barber. However, my research at the Erie Public Library revealed a startling fact: Louis G. had succumbed of a stroke at home, not of a bullet wound and a watery grave. I had held fast to a mistaken notion for more than sixty years!