Hot Springs, Arkansas, has had a colorful history,
especially during the years it was a vacation spot/hideaway for the likes of Al
Capone, Owney Madden, Bugsy Segal, and other gangster-variety folks. The only “saloon”
still in operation is the Ohio Club on Central Avenue. Lured by curiosity about
the massive and magnificent mahogany bar (circa 1870-80, hauled from Cincinnati
by barge, train, and horse-drawn cart), I popped in one afternoon for a Coke
and some chips and salsa upstairs where the gambling casino used to operate. I
kept feeling I wasn’t alone and glanced up to see a life-sized cut-out of Al
Capone complete with fedora and cigar. Al’s grinning presence added to rumors
of how he used the tunnels beneath the city for his own clandestine purposes,
birthed The Dreamland Series.
*****
Still reeling after the death of the love of
her life, Capt. Ned Blake, USAF, Trixie Collier Blake returns to her
barely-remembered hometown of Dreamland, Arkansas, to check out the building
willed to her by her grandfather. Almost immediately she encounters a series of
menacing threats and then learns of her family’s connection to notorious
gangster Al Capone during his heyday.
In fact, he seems to be still hanging around
the Quimby Building as evidenced by odd noises on the second floor and the
pervasive smell of cigar smoke.
She meets attorney Mitch Langley, a widower,
who identifies with her grief struggle because he’s been there-done that and
has the scars to prove it. Unfortunately, Trixie knows, but can’t prove, it’s
Mitch’s father Guy who’s trying to pry her loose from the building and get her
out of Dreamland.
The chance discovery of a maze of tunnels
beneath the town, an old mine put to other uses during Prohibition, deepens one
mystery and leads to another. But Trixie digs in her heels, taking a page from
the playbook of young Danny Jefferson, who doesn’t let his Down Syndrome define
him, and who knows more about what goes on in Dreamland than anybody suspects.
Then, just when Trixie thinks she’s home
free, someone from her family’s past, now bent on revenge, threatens to do what
Guy Langley and Al Capone’s tunnels couldn’t.
*****
I loved the idea of hidden history in an historical building
like the Ohio Club, and I often use characters with challenges such as Danny
Jefferson. As a former special ed teacher and grandmother of an adorable
two-year-old boy with Down Syndrome, I knew Danny could play a hero’s role.
Too, I was widowed very young like Trixie and had to deal with starting over.
*****
Meet the residents of Dreamland, Arkansas (including its
resident ghosts) in this new cozy mystery/romantic suspense series:
Also available from Amazon: The six-book Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series, individually and as a boxed set.
*****
Bio: Judy Nickles is a retired teacher,
genealogist, traveler, British crime-drama fan, ghost tour- taker, and writer,
whose favorite possession is her Kindle and who recently flew in a World War II
B-24 bomber built the same year she was born. (You figure it out!) She is not
aging quietly but rather having her adolescent rebellion 50+ years late. She
has an alter ego as Mimi of four, one
of whom had better turn out to be a writer before years of filed clippings and
ideas make a bonfire for her less-imaginative sons.
Social media links:
Website: Someday IsHere
Twitter: @BigChiefTablet
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Blog: The Word Place
