Providence Rag

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This novel was inspired by two of Rhode Island’s most notorious murder cases. However, the tale told in these pages is in no way intended to be a true account of the killers, their victims, the police who investigated the crimes, the lawyers and judges who adjudicated the cases, the jailers who confined the guilty, or the journalists who told their stories. The characters’ personalities, actions, thoughts, and dialogue are entirely the product of the author’s imagination. Although I have named a few characters after old friends, they bear scant resemblance to them. For example, the real Don Sockol is a Rhode Island educator and former journalist, not a Corrections Department clerk. A handful of real people, including Boston Red Sox World Series hero Curt Schilling, are mentioned in passing. However, only three of them-Roomful of Blues vocalist Phil Pemberton, WPRO radio newsman Ron St. Pierre, and CNN correspondent Nancy Grace-have speaking parts; and they are permitted only a few lines of fictional action or dialogue. Rhode Island geography is as accurate as I can make it, but I have played around a bit with space and time. For example, Hopes, the newspaper bar where I drank decades ago when I reported the news for the Providence Journal, is long gone, but I enjoyed resurrecting it for this story. I also borrowed the colorful nickname of a former Rhode Island attorney general; but the fictional and real Attila the Nun are nothing alike, and the character’s actions and dialogue are entirely imaginary.

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