Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Edgar Allan Poe is, of course, one of America's most iconic writers. Many credit him with inventing or popularizing multiple literary genres, including mystery, horror and detective fiction. But the real Poe has become distorted over the years - transformed by fans into a dark and tortured soul obsessed with alcohol and death.

My guest is author Mark Dawidziak, and his new book is called "A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe". He not only shares with us what Poe was really like, but also walks us through some of the many theories surrounding Poe's agonizing death in a Baltimore hospital in October of 1849. He also talks about possible explanations for Poe's mysterious three missing days - just before he was discovered, delirious and in another man's clothes, at a Baltimore polling-place.

More about the author's prolific work at his website, here: ⁠https://www.markdawidziak.com/⁠

Connect with the author through Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/mark.dawidziak⁠

(Orig Pub Date 2/14/23).
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Throughout nineteenth-century Edinburgh, the surgeon Joseph Bell was known for his extraordinary talent for detection and diagnosis. To the amazement of onlookers at the Royal Infirmary, he could read a patient’s ailments, occupation, and personal habits from a single glance. Though such deductive powers were all quite “elementary” to Bell, they had a profound influence on the medical student and budding writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon enough, Bell’s methods helped spark the creation of fiction’s most iconic detective.

My guest is New York Times bestselling author and medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, author of the new book Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes. We talk about Bell’s complicated bond with Conan Doyle and a couple of the murder cases Bell investigated alongside his friend, Edinburgh police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn. The two men even took an unofficial interest in the Whitechapel murders.

The author's website: https://drlindseyfitzharris.com/

The author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindseyfitzharris

The author on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindseyFitzharris/

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In March 1957, Master Sergeant Robert Reynolds, a U.S. military adviser living with his family outside Taipei, Taiwan, shot and killed a man named Liu Ziran, who Reynolds claimed had been peeping through his bathroom window. Because Reynolds had diplomatic immunity, he was tried by a U.S. Army court-martial, and Taiwanese officials had no say in the proceedings. When he was acquitted that May, outrage boiled over, and an angry mob stormed the U.S. Embassy in Taipei.

My guest is Stephen G. Craft, author of American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. He discusses how Taiwan emerged as a political power separate from mainland China, and the uneasy but mutually beneficial relationship between the United States and the Republic of China in the 1950s.

The author's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University bio page: https://erau.edu/faculty/Stephen.Craft

The author's publisher page: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813166353/american-justice-in-taiwan/
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In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril.

My guest is Sara McDougall, and her book Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor follows Jaques’s investigation as he uncovers one woman’s story of resilience and survival.

More about the author here: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/sara-mcdougall

The author's publisher page: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691268910/justice-for-jehanne

The author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saramcdougall_medieval/
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There has been lots of buzz recently about Netflix's gory new series Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, and Cara Robertson, author of "The Trial of Lizzie Borden", joins me once again, this time to share her thoughts on how the case is depicted, separate fact from fiction and to answer some Patreon supporter questions.

Cara's website: https://www.carawrobertson.com/

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