Fundraising The Dead

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W.C. Fields once said, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” Of course, he was talking about an epitaph for his tombstone, but Philadelphia is a lot better than dead. It’s a great place, with something for everyone-culture, sports, history. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life in and around the city, and that’s why I set my new series there.

This book is based on an institution in Center City where I worked for several happy years, and where I met some wonderful, dedicated people. Let me assure you that no character in this book is based on any employee there, past or present, living or dead, and the crimes in the story are my own invention. There has never been a murder there, to my knowledge.

There was, however, a real crime that was discovered while I worked there. That event and its aftermath inspired this story, because it became painfully obvious how easy it is to take advantage of both the trust and the shortcomings of such a venerable cultural institution. In that case the culprit was caught quickly and prosecuted successfully, thanks to the FBI. As for the rest, the descriptions of the outstanding collections, and the ongoing efforts to digitize catalogs and make the collections more widely available to the public, are all true. And like many peer cultural institutions in Philadelphia and throughout the country, this place suffers from chronic underfunding, which contributed to my decision to make my protagonist a fundraising professional (that and the fact that I was one), one of the people who fight to keep the doors open and the lights on so that the public can enjoy the collections.

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