Larry Millett

"When news of Shadwell Rafferty's death reaches Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous detective and his redoubtable companion Watson rush to Minnesota to hunt for their friend's killer. Set amid the glittering society and sordid underworld of 1928 St. Paul, Larry Millett's ninth and final Shadwell Rafferty mystery takes readers through the serpentine twists of Rafferty's fatal investigation"-- Like many mysteries, this one begins with a murder....

As the city of Minneapolis prepares for a visit from President William McKinley, someone else prepares for murder. On the day before the visit, a union activist is found hanged, naked, outside a ruined mansion. A placard around his neck reads "THE SECRET ALLIANCE HAS SPOKEN." Who is the alliance? What does it want? How was the victim involved with the city's corrupt mayor? And why did he possess a photograph of a prominent citizen in a compromising...

SHERLOCK HOLMES DISAPPEARS, POLICE SUSPECT FAMED DETECTIVE IN KIDNAPPING AND MURDER reads a New York headline. So begins the fifth mystery in Larry Millett's series. A letter, written in a secret cipher he recognizes all too well, reveals that an old foe of Holmes-a murderer he once captured after an incredible duel of wits-is back, has kidnapped his previous victim's widow, and is now impersonating Holmes himself. Holmes must once again match wits...

" The place is Minneapolis, the year is 1903, and Michael Masterson has fallen in love, or so he claims, with Addie Strongwood, a beautiful working-class girl with an interesting past and a mind of her own. But their promising relationship quickly begins to disintegrate before reaching a violent conclusion. Amid allegations of seduction, rape, and blackmail, Michael is shot dead and Addie goes on trial for first-degree murder. As the case unfolds...

When St. Paul financier Artemis Dodge is found dead in his armored penthouse sanctuary on the thirtieth floor of the city's tallest building, Irishman Shadwell Rafferty, an old friend of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, is called in to get to the bottom of things. He soon finds himself navigating a world of greedy tycoons and political intrigue and begins to investigate Dodge's young widow, his slippery assistant, and a mysterious anarchist....

"On December 18, 1961, wrecking trucks rumbled through the streets of downtown Minneapolis toward a rendezvous with the past. Their destination was the corner where the Metropolitan Building, for seventy-one years, had towered above its neighbors. But with the city in the midst of its greatest urban renewal project, the Metropolitan was about to come down, a victim of age, politics, and ideology. Lost Twin Cities, made up of images and stories reteived...

After a young union activist is found hanging naked on a tree in St. Paul on the eve of President William McKinley's visit, Shadwell Rafferty calls on his old friends, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, to assist in the investigation.

From the genteel elegance of Christ Lutheran Church in Minneapolis to the lowbrow wonder of Porky's Drive-in in St. Paul, the Twin Cities and other Minnesota communities are nothing short of a living museum of midcentury modernism, the new style of architecture that swept through much of America from 1945 to the mid-1960s. Renowned Minnesota architecture critic and historian Larry Millett conducts an eye-opening, spectacularly illustrated tour of...