Larry Millett

The spellbinding initial exploits of detective Shadwell Rafferty—now available in paperback Shadwell Rafferty’s last case may have led to his murder, but naturally—and fortunately, for followers of the indefatigable St. Paul detective—there’s more to the story. Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul gathers three novellas from Larry Millett, casting back to Rafferty’s beginnings to recount a trio of intriguing cases that honed his skills before he joined forces with Sherlock Holmes. In “Death in the News,” St. Paul citizens wake one morning to find that the sign on downtown’s tallest building that reads PIONEER PRESS has been altered—at considerable effort—to LIARS. An elaborate prank, yes, but it foreshadows a far worse crime, and Rafferty is on the case. In “The Birdman of Summit Avenue,” cats are turning up dead in the yards of St. Paul’s prominent citizens, and suspicion swiftly falls on the wealthy avian enthusiast Ambrose Harriman, but the case turns darker still when a neighborhood boy is found murdered in Harriman’s yard. In “The Gold King,” an enigmatic stranger arrives in town, calling himself the Gold King and announcing his plans to unearth hidden treasure, which eventually leads to a shocking conclusion. Steeped in the mystery and history of nineteenth-century St. Paul, these interlocking detective stories feature the characters—and the local character—that have made the Shadwell Rafferty series irresistible. Spellbinding as ever, these stories also afford the curious pleasure of watching Rafferty find his footing on his way to becoming the consummate detective whose exploits have delighted readers again and again.

Three novellas of murder and mystery in nineteenth-century Minneapolis OWNER DIES UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES AT MINNEAPOLIS MILL! HOTEL BELLMAN FOUND DEAD IN OSCAR WILDE’S ROOM! $10,000 REWARD FOR DISCOVERING MY MURDERER! These headlines are just the beginning as Larry Millett returns to the scene of the crime in three tales of intrigue and murder in historic Minneapolis. The mind that brought us the intrepid Shadwell Rafferty now introduces three unlikely but talented new detectives-in-laws Sophia Westerly and Annie Nichols, and the incomparable Oscar Wilde-who are thrown into murder investigations amid flour milling, literary culture, and labor organizing in the burgeoning city. Murder at the Falls takes us to the Perfection Flour Mill at St. Anthony Falls when one owner turns up dead under grotesque circumstances and suspicion lands on the other, plunging the city into a frenzy of dark speculation. In A Wilde Night at the Nicollet House, Oscar Wilde, in the midst of his 1882 North American tour and spouting witticisms as only he can, teams up with the long-time house detective at the Nicollet House Hotel to search for the murderer of the hotel bell captain found dead in his room. In The Death Committee, a champion lawyer of the working class, convinced his own murder is imminent, arranges for three citizens to investigate his death, with a $10,000 reward going to the one who finds the killer. Shining light on the colorful characters and curious corners of Twin Cities history, Mysterious Tales of Old Minneapolis brings the nineteenth-century city to vibrant life (and dastardly death) in the spellbinding style that Larry Millett’s legion of loyal readers have come to love.

Tales of murder and revenge: the early exploits of detective Shadwell Rafferty Shadwell Rafferty’s last case may have led to his murder, but naturally-and fortunately, for followers of the indefatigable St. Paul detective-there’s more to the story. Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul gathers three novellas from Larry Millett, casting back to Rafferty’s beginnings to recount a trio of intriguing cases that honed his skills before he joined forces with Sherlock Holmes. In “Death in the News,” St. Paul citizens wake one morning to find that the sign on downtown’s tallest building that reads PIONEER PRESS has been altered-at considerable effort-to LIARS. An elaborate prank, yes, but it foreshadows a far worse crime, and Rafferty is on the case. In “The Birdman of Summit Avenue,” cats are turning up dead in the yards of St. Paul’s prominent citizens, and suspicion swiftly falls on the wealthy avian enthusiast Ambrose Harriman, but the case turns darker still when a neighborhood boy is found murdered in Harriman’s yard. In “The Gold King,” an enigmatic stranger arrives in town, calling himself the Gold King and announcing his plans to unearth hidden treasure, which eventually leads to a shocking conclusion. Steeped in the mystery and history of nineteenth-century St. Paul, these interlocking detective stories feature the characters-and the local character-that have made the Shadwell Rafferty series irresistible. Spellbinding as ever, these stories also afford the curious pleasure of watching Rafferty find his footing on his way to becoming the consummate detective whose exploits have delighted readers again and again.

The ninth and final Minnesota mystery, in which Shadwell Rafferty, with the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, may have solved his own murder? Like many mysteries, this one begins with a murder. But in this case the victim happens to be the detective, on the verge of revealing the culprit in an earlier crime. Had Shadwell Rafferty identified his own murderer? When news of Rafferty’s death reaches Sherlock Holmes, in Chicago on the last leg of an American speaking tour, 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, even as Holmes, following in Rafferty’s tracks, may be closing in on the answer to both cases. This ingenious double mystery takes us to every corner of St. Paul, from the city’s most notorious speakeasy to a home for unwed mothers to the mansions of Summit Avenue, and at every turn we find another suspect: an ambitious mayor and his devoted fixer-in-chief, a heartless blackmailer and a police detective mired in city hall connections, a poet-turned-mystery writer with a suspicious coterie, and a priest hiding a terrible secret. A mysterious woman in Minneapolis who makes certain illicit arrangements and a young man in possession of incriminating documents provide Holmes with vital clues that lead to a final confrontation with an exceptionally devious murderer worthy of the exceptionally devious plot that brings the Minnesota mystery series to a fitting and powerful conclusion.

The ninth and final Minnesota mystery, in which Shadwell Rafferty, with the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, may have solved his own murder? Like many mysteries, this one begins with a murder. But in this case the victim happens to be the detective, on the verge of revealing the culprit in an earlier crime. Had Shadwell Rafferty identified his own murderer? When news of Rafferty’s death reaches Sherlock Holmes, in Chicago on the last leg of an American speaking tour, 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, even as Holmes, following in Rafferty’s tracks, may be closing in on the answer to both cases. This ingenious double mystery takes us to every corner of St. Paul, from the city’s most notorious speakeasy to a home for unwed mothers to the mansions of Summit Avenue, and at every turn we find another suspect: an ambitious mayor and his devoted fixer-in-chief, a heartless blackmailer and a police detective mired in city hall connections, a poet-turned-mystery writer with a suspicious coterie, and a priest hiding a terrible secret. A mysterious woman in Minneapolis who makes certain illicit arrangements and a young man in possession of incriminating documents provide Holmes with vital clues that lead to a final confrontation with an exceptionally devious murderer worthy of the exceptionally devious plot that brings the Minnesota mystery series to a fitting and powerful conclusion.

St. Paul, Minnesota. October 1, 1917. High above the city, a renowned local financier named Artemis Dodge lies facedown on the floor of his armored penthouse sanctuary, a single bullet hole in his head. Thirty stories up, in the city’s tallest building, and not a shred of evidence or sign pointing to anyone having broken into the wealthy man’s fortress. It is-to all appearances-an impossible crime. Enter Shadwell Rafferty: Irishman, St. Paul saloonkeeper, sometime detective, and old friend of the celebrated sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Summoned by Louis B. Hill-son of railroad magnate James J. Hill-to investigate, Rafferty descends into a world dominated by greedy tycoons and awash in political intrigue and wartime fearmongering. Suspects lurk in every corner of the city-including Dodge’s beautiful young widow, his slippery assistant, and a shadowy anarchist-and Rafferty pursues them from the streets of Ramsey Hill and the rooms of the Ryan Hotel to the labyrinthine caves under the Schmidt brewery. Matching wits with his foes at the police department and his unsavory rival, the St. Paul detective Mordecai Jones, Rafferty knows that in order to bring a killer to justice he must first unravel the riddle of a single bullet fired in a locked room, three hundred feet above the streets of St. Paul. Set during a bitter streetcar strike and amid the clandestine activities of a ruthless commission charged with enforcing wartime patriotism, Larry Millett has created a classic and perfectly executed locked-room mystery in the great tradition of John Dickson Carr. From locked rooms and civil unrest to murder and wartime paranoia, The Magic Bullet presents Rafferty’s most challenging case, and its gripping conclusion-with a timely assist from Sherlock Holmes-finds both Rafferty and Millett at the top of their games.

Welcome to Paradise County, Minnesota. No, it doesn't resemble the original Garden of Eden. It was named after a nineteenth-century lumberman who turned its towering groves of virgin pines into stumps, setting the stage for a huge forest fire that killed 400 people. After that catastrophe, settlers arrived to build hardscrabble farms out of the ashes, and the county became just another lonely, quiet place in the cold heart of flyover land. But that all changed one day when a baffling mystery began to unfold in the county seat of Pineland, a small town of under three thousand people on the banks of the Paradise River. The county's richest man, Peter Swindell, vanishes after his hilltop mansion is blown to bits. Soon, vaguely threatening messages appear all around town, posted by a shadowy figure who calls himself the Serenader. A high-powered lawyer from Chicago suddenly appears in Pineland, with a mysterious story of her own to tell. Murder and mayhem follow, set to the curious music of an old and all-but-forgotten song called "Pineland Serenade." Local and state law enforcement officials appear unable to solve the mystery-or perhaps they are part of it, hiding old and deep secrets. It's left to the newly elected county attorney, Paul Zweifel, to solve the case. A sharp-tongued loner whose best friend is an existential border collie named Camus, Zweifel begins digging into the mystery even as he becomes a suspect in the crimes. The case leads him down a winding trail into the pure heart of evil and a final, chilling confrontation with the Serenader.

The seventh in Larry Millett’s thrilling mystery series pursues the tangled truth behind the killing of the spoiled young heir to an industrial fortune 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 in a welter of conflicting evidence and surprise discoveries, a jury must decide whether Addie acted in self-defense or killed her one-time lover with the coldest of calculation. Reconstructing the case through trial testimony, newspaper stories, the journal of Addie’s flamboyant defense attorney, and her own first-person account as serialized in the Minneapolis Tribune, Larry Millett builds a suspenseful tale of love, money, betrayal, and death. Sherlock Holmes and Shadwell Rafferty, long known to readers from Millett’s previous mysteries, play crucial roles in the unraveling of the case, which also offers a glimpse into the sharply divided worlds of the rich and the poor at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Dogged by depression, doubt, and-as a trip to the Mayo Clinic has revealed-emphysema, 66-year-old Sherlock Holmes is preparing to return to England when he receives a shock: a note slipped under his hotel room door, from a vicious murderer

The story of one of Minnesota’s most famous and most mourned buildings, set against the history of downtown Minneapolis When it opened in 1890, the twelve-story Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building was the tallest, largest, and most splendid commercial structure in Minneapolis-a mighty stone skyscraper built for the ages. How this grand Richardsonian Romanesque edifice, which later came to be called the Metropolitan Building, rose with the growth of Minneapolis only to fall in the throes of the city’s postwar renewal, is revealed in Metropolitan Dreams in all its scandalous intrigue. It is a tale of urban growing pains and architectural ghosts and of colorful, sometimes criminal characters amid the grandeur and squalor of building and rebuilding a city’s skyline. Against the thrumming backdrop of turn-of-the-century Minneapolis, architectural critic and historian Larry Millett recreates the impressive rise of the massive office building, its walls of green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone surrounding its true architectural wonder, a dazzling twelve-story iron and glass light court. The drama, however, was far from confined to the building itself. A consummate storyteller, Millett summons the frenetic atmosphere in Gilded Age Minneapolis that encouraged the likes of Northwestern Guaranty’s founder, real estate speculator Louis Menage, whose shady deals financed this Minneapolis masterpiece-and then forced him to flee both prosecution and the country a mere three years later. Dubious as its financial beginnings might have been, the economic circumstances of the Metropolitan’s demise were at least as questionable. Anchoring Minneapolis’s historic Gateway District in its heyday, the building’s fortunes shifted with the city’s demographics and finally it fell victim to the fervor of one of the largest downtown urban renewal projects ever undertaken in the United States. Though the long and furious battle to save the Metropolitan ultimately failed in 1962, its ghost persists in the passion for historic preservation stirred by its demise-and in Metropolitan Dreams, whose photographs, architectural drawings, and absorbing narrative bring the building and its story to vibrant, enduring life.

When the Pioneer Press Building opened its doors in 1889, it was news. The twelve-story skyscraper, the tallest at the time in the heart of St. Paul-featuring the first glass elevator in the country-merited a forty-page special edition of the Pioneer Press, whose editors modestly proclaimed it the greatest newspaper building mother earth carries. A year later, another architectural monument, the Endicott Complex-which wraps around the Pioneer Building-opened its doors. Designed by rising St. Paul architect Cass Gilbert, the Endicott included two office buildings linked by a one-story L-shaped shopping arcade crowned by a stained-glass ceiling. Journalist and architectural historian Larry Millett tells the story of these two icons of downtown St. Paul from conception through numerous alterations to their present incarnation as vibrant cultural and living spaces in the citys center. He describes how the Pioneer came to be designed by noted Chicago architect Solon Beman, who in 1910 added four floors to create a sixteen-story light court that remains one of Minnesotas great architectural spaces. Millett also describes Gilberts meticulous work in designing the Endicott complex, which was inspired by the Renaissance palaces of Florence. Gilbert would later go on to produce such masterpieces as the Minnesota State Capitol and the Woolworth Building in New York. As entertaining as it is edifying, Heart of St. Paul combines architectural history with the rich human story behind two buildings that have played a prominent role in the life of the city for over a century. The book includes an introduction by Kristin Makholm, Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, which has found a new home in the buildings.

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 this rich and varied landscape. A history lesson as entertaining as it is enlightening, Minnesota Modern provides a close-up view of a style that penetrated the social, political, and cultural machinery of the times. Extending from modest suburban ramblers and ranch houses to the grandest public and commercial structures, midcentury modernism expressed new ways of thinking about how to live, work, and play in communities that sprang up as thousands of military members returned from World War II. Millett describes the style’s sources in the work of European masters like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, as well as the midwestern innovations of Frank Lloyd Wright, and its refinement at the University of Minnesota under the guidance of Ralph Rapson and other modernists. He shows us its applications in twelve midcentury homes in Minnesota and takes us through its many permutations in sites as different as Barry Byrne’s St. Columba Catholic Church in St. Paul and Eero Saarinen’s sprawling IBM complex in Rochester. This is Minnesota modern at its historic best, a firsthand, in-depth history of a singularly American sensibility and aesthetic writ large on the midwestern region.

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 with a particularly cunning adversary, one whose hatred of Holmes has seemingly become the killer’s single greatest obsession. Chasing the kidnapper from London to New York to Chicago, Holmes and Watson race to keep up. Every move Holmes makes is expected; every trap proves elusive. Only with the assistance of his American cohort, the saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty, can Holmes hope to settle the score once and for all-or be framed for the crime himself.

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 position? Shadwell Rafferty searches for answers, encountering bribery, corruption, union organizers, anarchists, and conspiracy, putting himself in danger. But as luck would have it, his old friends Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are on their way. In this fourth installment of Larry Millett’s Minnesota Mystery series, Shadwell Rafferty commands center stage in a brand-new city. Packed with Millett’s signature historical and architectural detail, this book is deviously delightful.

Sherlock Holmes is bored between cases at 221B Baker Street. So when King Oskar II of Sweden-who has heard of the discovery of the Kensington Rune Stone by a farmer in Minnesota-asks to engage his services, Holmes jumps at the chance to decipher the runes and determine whether the find is real or a hoax. With Dr. John H. Watson by his side, faithfully recording every detail, Holmes makes his way to Minnesota for a third time. But, in the first of many strange and unfortunate coincidences, the farmer who found the mysterious stone is murdered, and the stone itself is stolen on the day the famous detective arrives. With the help of one Shadwell Rafferty, now a friend and partner, Holmes must solve this baffling case to find both the stone and the murderer.

In Lost Twin Cities, Larry Millett brought to life the vanished architecture of downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. Now, in Once There Were Castles, he offers a richly illustrated look at another world of ghosts in our midst: the lost mansions and estates of the Twin Cities. Nobody can say for sure how many lost mansions haunt the Twin Cities, but at least five hundred can be accounted for in public records and archives. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, entire neighborhoods of luxurious homes have disappeared, virtually without a trace. Many grand estates that once spread out over hundreds of acres along the shores of Lake Minnetonka are also gone. The greatest of these lost houses often had astonishingly short lives: the lavish Charles Gates mansion in Minneapolis survived only nineteen years, and Norman Kittson’s sprawling castle on the site of the St. Paul Cathedral stood for barely more than two decades. Railroad and freeway building, commercial and institutional expansion, fires, and financial disasters all claimed their share of mansions; others succumbed to their own extravagance, becoming too costly to maintain once their original owners died. The stories of these grand houses are, above all else, the stories of those who built and lived in them-from the fantastic saga of Marion Savage to the continent-spanning conquests of James J. Hill, to the all-but-forgotten tragedy of Olaf Searle, a poor immigrant turned millionaire who found and lost a dream in the middle of Lake Minnetonka. These and many other mansion builders poured all their dreams, desires, and obsessions into extravagant homes designed to display wealth and solidify social status in a culture of ever-fluctuating class distinctions. The first book to take an in-depth look at the history of the Twin Cities’ mansions, Once There Were Castles presents ninety lost mansions and estates, organized by neighborhood and illustrated with photographs and drawings. An absorbing read for Twin Cities residents and a crucial addition to the body of work on the region’s history, Once There Were Castles brings these “ghost mansions” back to life.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, M. D. The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist—known only as the Red Demon—who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway. Set against the backdrop of the real, devastating Hinckley forest fire of 1894, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon is the tense and atmospheric first novel in Larry Millett's classic series of adventures that brought Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Minnesota.

The year is 1896, and St. Paul's magnificent Winter Carnival is under way when Holmes and Watson are summoned by the city's most powerful man, railroad magnate James J. Hill. A wealthy young man disappears on the eve of his wedding—and his fiancée suspiciously discards her wedding dress. After a grisly discovery in the carnival's Ice Palace leads to a flurry of clues, Holmes is on the case. His pursuit of the murderer takes him through the highest echelons of St. Paul society and into cahoots with Shadwell Rafferty, a gregarious saloonkeeper and part-time private investigator. Soon Holmes, Watson, and Rafferty are embroiled in a perilous adventure that takes them from one frozen corner of the city to another and out onto the treacherous ice of the Mississippi River as they trail a cruel and ruthless killer.

Let architecture critic Larry Millett be your guide to one of the most picturesque neighbourhoods in the Twin Cities, a treasure trove of architectural styles and storied homes. Whether you are discovering the Purcell-Cutts House near Lake of the Isles or the Suburban World Theater, this guidebook will satisfy your craving for details about the structures and the people who built them. The guide offers up walking tours of Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun and Uptown, Lowry Hill, and Lake of the Isles. Each tour is copiously illustrated with current and historic photographs and paired with a detailed map. This deeply informative guidebook is perfect for tourists discovering the Twin Cities or residents exploring what is right next door.

Let architecture critic Larry Millett be your guide to one of the most picturesque neighbourhoods in the Twin Cities, a treasure trove of architectural styles and storied homes. Whether you are gazing at the magnificent James J Hill House or the lovely little Virginia Street Church, this guidebook will satisfy your craving for details about the structures and the people who built them. The guide includes walking tours for Summit Avenue, Summit Hill, and Ramsey Hill. Each tour is copiously illustrated with current and historic photographs and paired with a detailed map. This deeply informative guidebook is perfect for tourists discovering the Twin Cities or residents exploring what is right next door.