‘Page Turners’ book study group of North Carolina Skypes with me about “The Burning of The Piping Rock”

Skyping with an author may not be something new to you, but it was to me when recently I was a part of a “Skype with the Author” event. But in this case, I was the author!

Members of Page Turners, the book study group of the Tryon United Methodist Church of Tryon, North Carolina decided to read my historical mystery novel, The Burning of The Piping Rock.

Tryon United Methodist Church

The Page Turners’ leader is Lynn Montgomery. And in the spirit of “full disclosure” I have to report that one member of Page Turners is my cousin, Laura Bitter. Laura had read my novel and proposed it to her fellow members of Page Turners, who said yes. (Thank you, Laura, and your fellow Page Turners!)

Here’s how Laura describes Page Turners: “No dues, no refreshments. Just monthly gatherings to share thoughts about recent books and older books that have been selected by the group.”

And what a wonderful group! This time they were to meet at Laura’s house. Laura said the Page Turners had questions for me and asked me if we could have a phone conference. I said, “Sure!” Then someone suggested we Skype and the next thing I knew, Page Turners member Pam Monterisi was adjusting the screen on Laura’s laptop and we were off and running!

In case you’re not familiar with Skype, it is an application you can install on your computer (PC, tablet, iPad, Android, etc.) to allow you to communicate with others having Skype on theirs. It allows you to see and speak with people in real time.

The Page Turners folks had wonderfully probing and insightful questions. As we talked about the novel, I learned so much. When you hear questions about your work and the characters in them, you find yourself reacting to those characters, considering them, sometimes defending them.

MacFinn’s Drugstore

I had a chance to talk about how much real history there was in the book. Many of the memories expressed by protagonist George A. King were real—things he’d spoken of during his life that I had recalled, especially his memories as a PT Boat Commander in WW II, as well as his memories of working at MacFinn’s Drugstore in post-war Saratoga Springs with all of its casinos, mob activities and crooked politicians. He was held to be a sympathetic character by the Page Turners.

On the other hand, Harry the Torch, the other main character in the novel, was not held to be a sympathetic character. That was understandable, as Harry is an arsonist after all, but I confessed that I’d come to like Harry to a degree I wouldn’t have thought possible as I first began writing the novel. As with any fictional work, once the actual writing starts, the characters take over. They lead me in directions I had not foreseen, and they reveal things about themselves I hadn’t known.

One surprising question was: “How was I able to transcribe all those microcassette tapes?” that George A. King had recorded prior to his death. Well, I have an answer for that, but I’d rather tell you during a Skype session with your reading group or your class! If you’d be interested in Skyping with me to talk about my novel and about writing in general, please contact me on this site by clicking on the “Leave a Comment” button and together we’ll figure out a good time for me to Skype with your group, class or workshop.

If by chance you are reading this post, but haven’t read The Burning of The Piping Rock, you can purchase a copy at your local bookstore or online at Amazon.com. Click on the “WHERE TO BUY THE BOOK” tab for more information.

My thanks go out again to the Page Turners book study group of the Tryon United Methodist Church. You really know how to make an author feel special.

I’m looking forward to Skyping with your book group, your English class or your Creative Writing class or workshop! Contact me, please.

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The design for this site, all artwork used on it, and the cover artwork used in The Burning of The Piping Rock was created by Black Swan Image Works.

Patrick Gilgallon takes “The Burning of The Piping Rock” to new heights!

‘Piping Rock’ at LG 09-13 – photo by Patrick Gilgallon.

This photo was taken by Patrick Gilgallon, a fellow devotee of Barbershopper music, who sent it in an email, saying: “While at my cabin on Lake George I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED READING The Burning of the Piping Rock! I couldn’t stop thinking about the story line when I put down the book periodically. So much could I NOT put down the book, that upon departing for a hike, I packed it in my backpack. At the summit, I read for 2 hrs.  What a beautiful day that was!!!”

To prove his point, Patrick attached this photo he took at the summit.

Thank you very much, Patrick, for your totally unexpected and totally appreciated email!

“Gangster Squad”: No Academy Award, but, ooooh, we our love our criminals!

Seen the new Sean Penn film Gangster Squad about the end of mafia member Mickey Cohen’s crime career.

Scheduled to be released last fall, Gangster Squad‘s release was held back until this January because of the Aurora shooting. January being a traditionally poor month for openings, along with the initial bad reviews, might well keep it from getting next year’s Academy Award. That in mind, you might not believe what I’m about to tell you!

Set in the late 1940s, Gangster Squad is a “True Crime” film based on the LA Police Department’s “Gangster Squad unit” that set out to get Cohen. Box Office Mojo defines “True Crime” film as “movies based on real crimes or criminals.” Box Office Mojo rates Gangster Squad NUMBER 6 on its list of the top 47 True Crime movies from 1980-Present. This is by sales, but still, despite some negative reviews (and some were pretty bad!) Gangster Squad ranks up there with such hits as Goodfellas and American Gangster.

Why, oh why, do we love anything and everything about organized crime? And why another B-movie about the mob of long ago and this psychopath Mickey Cohen?

Easy. Because we love royalty and organized crime is a kind of perverted royalty, with all royalty’s lineage, pedigrees and idiosyncrasies. Cohen was mob royalty—of a sort—tracing his lineage to New York mobster kingpin Arnold Rothstein. Rothstein was accused, though never convicted, of orchestrating the infamous Black Sox Scandal, the fixing of the World Series of 1919. Because of the Black Sox Scandal, organized crime rocketed from being fascinating to being a full-time obsession for Americans.

Rothstein came from a wealthy business family and used Prohibition, which started in 1919, to make crime a major American industry. He was vilified and glamorized in the press. He was so well-known that, when F. Scott Fitzgerald thinly disguised Rothstein as the racketeer Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, everyone knew Fitzgerald meant Rothstein.

“King” Rothstein had many knights at his crooked round table—gangsters such as Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello , Joe Adonis and Mickey Cohen. Rothstein was deeply involved in illegal gambling in the East. In the 1920s, he brought Lansky, Costello, and Adonis to Saratoga Springs, where they eventually controlled most of Saratoga’s illegal gambling casinos. One was Piping Rock Casino, which I feature in my historical mystery novel, The Burning of The Piping Rock. Rothstein was gunned down in 1928 and his proteges split up his empire and “blossomed.” Lansky became regarded as the financial brains of the mafia. Mickey became an enforcer.

America was deeply split over crime in the 1920s. While Americans voted for Prohibition, they lived evading it. While they condemned lawlessness, they found “little crimes” weren’t considered all that bad. Very soon “bigger crimes” weren’t considered all that bad, and quite quickly many criminals became celebrities. In the 1920s, people devoured the endless newspaper coverage about rum running, gambling, rival mobs and violent crime. Cities like Chicago became crime havens. Many magazines and books also featured true crime stories and detective fiction. In the late 1920s Hollywood started a decade-long string of films about racketeers, the underworld, and the mob. When the “Talkies” entered in 1929, audiences saw and heard mobsters speaking and their sub-machine guns blazing. They idolized Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart portraying demented murderers and thugs. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Damon Runyon began publishing his humorous stories about gangsters in the 1920s. Those left a legacy of a gentler, even kinder gangster. Think of Sky Masterson, as portrayed in Guys and Dolls.

Of Rothstein’s many proteges, Meyer Lansky could be considered as the respectable type of gangster. Mickey Cohen definitely could not. Cohen came to crime as a child, barely avoiding his first arrest in 1923 at age nine for selling illegal alcohol for his older brother. With the exception of his years spent as a professional boxer, his career was all crime, all the time. Cohen ended up working for Lansky and Lou Rothkopf. They sent Cohen to Los Angeles in the mid-1940s to watch over Bugsy Siegel, another Rothstein protege. Cohen helped Siegel establish the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, a hotel Siegel managed. It is said Cohen murdered Siegel, following mob orders.

By the late 1940s Cohen had come to “own” crime in Los Angeles. This is the period of Cohen’s life described in Gangster Squad. The City of Los Angeles and the US government delivered Cohen a one-two punch. In 1949, the LA Police Department set out to destroy Cohen’s empire. In that same year, US Senator Estes Kefauver started his “United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce Committee”—the Kefauver Committee. America watched the Kefauver Committee hearings on TV (a first) as it grilled mobsters, crooked politicians and police, and anyone else involved in organized crime. By 1951, Kefauver had severely crippled the mob in America, shattering its  kingdoms, including those of Rothstein’s knights—Cohen, Lansky and others. Cohen spent four years in jail; Lansky a few months.

But the mob’s crime dynasty survived and has lived on—along with our fascination of it. From the 1950s on, there have been thousands of books, TV shows, and movies about the mob, some True Crime,  some fictional. The pendulum has swung back and forth between glorifying law enforcement officers (The Untouchables) to glorifying the mob (The Godfather).

And now, for good or ill, we have Gangster Squad. Why? It’s the power organized crime possesses. It fascinates us, just as we’re fascinated by other centers of human power—politics, religion, corporations, or royal families. Think of Shakespeare. He turned Richard III into a monster. Gangster Squad tries to turn Mickey Cohen into a human. Where’s Shakespeare when you need him?

The mob will probably always be with us, like death and taxes—or, as Mickey Cohen might have said, “like death and protection.”

J.A.C.K.

Saratogian article on my January 8 presentation on “The Burning of The Piping Rock!”

This Tuesday (Jan. 8) at 7 p.m. I’ll be giving a presentation in the Saratoga Arts Center (320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs) on The Burning of The Piping Rock for the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation! Samantha Bosshart has written an article in The Saratogian about it called, “Preservation Matters: Author unveils mystery of the burning of Piping Rock Casino at annual meeting”! (Click on the article’s title to read it online.) Come join us!

Thank you Samantha Bosshart and The Saratogian!

Joe Cutshall-King

Anniversary of a Successful Saratoga Scandal

Piping Rock Casino poker chip

It’s the 58^th anniversary of the burning of the Piping Rock. On the morning of August 17, 1954, Piping Rock Casino was burned in Saratoga Springs’ most scandalous arson. In the 58 years since, no one has ever solved who burned it—although my father said it was torched by an arsonist known only as Harry the Torch.

No one has ever answered why it was burned.  But it must have been torched for a reason. Otherwise, why burn a casino that had been seized by the feds for back taxes, had not been open for business for 3 years, had been sold at auction a year before it burned and had not been insured by the new owner? Why was Piping Rock Casino reportedly empty, yet was broken into and robbed of gaming tables and other items shortly before it was torched?

We have at least four suspects: the three mafia members who “owned” Piping Rock,  Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello and Joe Adonis—and the fourth, Lansky’s dear friend, Saratoga Springs attorney James A. Leary, head of Saratoga’s Republican machine, owner of MacFinn’s Drugstore, and one of the slickest criminals ever to avoid prosecution by New York State or the United States. I will be adding names to this list.

What were they trying to cover up? What was in the “empty” casino that that someone wanted hidden? Is there any evidence beneath the housing development on Piping Rock Circle now standing over the Piping Rock Casino’s remains at the corner of Union Ave. and Gilbert Rd. in Saratoga?

Because it’s Saratoga Springs, we probably will never know. Another successful Saratoga scandal. So, happy 58^th anniversary, Piping Rock!

And, as Harry the Torch might have said, “Keep the Home Fires Burning!”

Oyster Bay newspaper + Forest Books = “Piping Rock” Sizzling!

Forest Books' Tracey Aledort

Check out this Oyster Bay Enterprise Pilot article (3/1/12) about Tracey Aledort of Forest Books in Locust Valley, Long Island, which is carrying my mystery novel! (Courtesy: Oyster Bay Enterprise Pilot)

“Piping Rock” now in Locust Valley LI bookstore!

Forest Books of Locust Valley, Long Island is now carrying The Burning of The Piping Rock! (Locust Valley, home of the historic Piping Rock Road, plays an integral part in the novel.) To my friends in that area, please visit Tracey Aledort at Forest Books (or call her to order a copy at 516-759-1489)!