Mine: Murder and Mystery Underground is a story of heroes and villains, many of them working at cross purposes in the endless pursuit of profits from the coal business. An explosion that claims the lives of dozens of miners in the Anthracite fields is tied by the inspection team to an explosion at Coalman Mine on a quiet Sunday morning that claims sixty-three lives. Finn and his team, with Valery Miller in a key role, dig out the causes of the disasters and work to tie them in to a political scandal and organized crime’s lust for its favorite weapon, black powder stolen right from the stores of mining companies across the state. Through it all, an unending stream of fatal accidents is a constant reminder of the importance of their work, but they are driven by their need to provide a measure of justice to the victims.

Reviews

Humanized heroes and a heroine. Loved the character portraits. Madigan paints pictures of believable people who risk it all to investigate mine accidents. The descriptions of one character’s sea voyage on a refurbished warship from Europe to New York was especially enjoyable for me. There are lovely lyrical passages describing the mountains of Pennsylvania. A few romances serve to soften the tragedy. Worth rereading even, and not many books will lure me back for a second time. Highly recommend this for historical fiction buffs, and also folks who, like me, came of age in this coal region and want to learn more about it. —Moe Beck

Stars a slice of life and love in the 1930’s. A wonderful, human story about the dedication — and perils of being a mine inspector in the 1930’s. A warm human tale and I could almost smell the coal. A reminder of how deadly the job of coal miner was. —Tom Ferrick

Deeply researched, moving writing. Strong character development and a very readable fiction based on deep research in the history of coal mining and the culture of the mining industry. A very moving story...A real page turner. —Micheal Madigan

Gripping. From the first chapter, the author relayed the humanity of the characters and devastation of their work. The inclusion of intimate relationships juxtaposed to the grit of mine work and compelling characters to live the story out left me hopeful for a second book! —Erin Clark

An insightful look into government working for the people. "Mine" is a clear look at the risks and sacrifices earlier generations faced to live an "American Dream" that we would not recognize, and the key role that dedicated government officials play to make working in America safer. It's a story from another time, still repeated in our digital world of office callbacks and lax safety standards on freight trains and chocolate factories. It's worth the read. —Tom Nugent

Coalman Mine, with its rich vein of bituminous, fed the families of Portage and many coal region towns like it under an unusual, unspoken agreement between deep coal miners and their managers. No matter what happened in the gassy, unstable mine down at the end of town, the miners would keep moving coal. If they were injured, or killed in the process, like the old song said, “Blood and bone is the price of coal,” the mine would stop working just long enough to clear their bodies and, perhaps, provide a decent burial after a funeral mass. It was that way all over the coal fields of Pennsylvania, from the bituminous mines in the south western part of the state to the anthracite hard coal fields spread around the northeast.

No one working in the mines paid much attention to the risks. The coal business pushed on. The miners knew it would always be dangerous to work underground. But moving coal was the key objective because it meant money for mine owners, for managers, and for miners. Each ton drew enough money to cover the needs of the companies and the salaries of the workers. That there would be an accident that added to the sad toll of lost miners was a certainty. The question was when and where. Unions worked to minimize the risk, but not always successfully.

In the basement of the State Department of Commerce in Harrisburg, Edward Finn manages a team of mine inspectors who are first on the scene whenever an accident claims more than five lives. Wherever there were mines, there were inspectors ready to respond to alarms. It was an unusual group of people, among them a tough, red-haired woman whose murdered father was a legend in the United Mine Workers, a Romanian engineer fluent in the languages of Eastern Europe who was a veteran of the lignite mines in Transylvania, a veteran state trooper, perhaps the most honest cop of them all, on loan to the mining department to give it law enforcement clout, and Finn himself, a miner with a passion for justice who quickly became an incorruptible bureaucrat in a business saturated with all manners of corruption.