WGN’S RICK KOGAN INTERVIEWS CHARLES MADIGAN ABOUT MINE

Book Title

Mine: Murder and Mystery Underground

Edited by Book Writing Experts
Available now on Amazon

Summary

Charles Madigan’s “Mine: Murder and Mystery Underground” takes its readers into a world of conflict, corruption, and violence stretching all the way from East Coast organized crime families to the Kremlin. A team of dedicated state investigators headed by mining veteran Edward Finn, reaches out from Harrisburg to every corner of the state looking for the truth behind the deaths of hundreds miners in the hard coal fields in the northeast to the bituminous fields in Western Pennsylvania.

They uncover a conflict that pits the United Mine Workers against a Moscow-backed National Miners Union, designed to plant the seeds of Soviet influence across the essential coal industry. The battle is fueled by black powder stolen from corrupt mining officials and used to unleash havoc across the state.

Along the way, they cross paths with an array of characters that bring the coal field conflict to life, along with a collection of state capitol denizens ranging from old time grifters to reformers eager to hold the system to account for its all too frequent string of felonies.

About the Author

Charles Madigan is familiar with the models he used to create all the characters in the conflicting world of union, governments, and organized crime. The son, grandson and great grandson of miners from Cambria County in the bituminous fields, he is closely acquainted with what happens deep underground where no one is looking, how people are slain, and how they are corrupted. An award-winning veteran reporter who covered lawmakers everywhere from Pennsylvania to Washington, he also spent two years in Moscow covering the Kremlin and Soviet life and culture and closed his career with ten years as Presidential Writer in Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He and his wife live in Evanston, Illinois. The couple have three sons.

Read about his other books at charlesmadigan.com/works.

MINE: The characters

Edward Finn, the chief of mine safety in Harrisburg, a veteran miner from the hard coal region with a deep and aggressive respect for the men who work at great risk digging coal.

Valery Miller, Finn’s deputy and a passionate mining inspector, the first woman to hold that job, whose union activist father was murdered during a strike in western Pennsylvania. She is out to avenge his death and hold mining companies to the letter of law the on safety issues.

Anders Apostole, an engineer and immigrant from Romania who speaks five Eastern European languages and who worked underground for years in the lignite mines of Vulcan. He is a meticulous investigator and a diligent witness to the tragedies and disasters that play out in the coal fields.

Howard Morgan, a veteran state trooper who is added to Finn’s team to give it more law enforcement authority. He is fearless and aggressive in his pursuit of wrongdoing and does not hesitate to use his authority pursuing wrong-doing, or his pistol.

Emil Getner, a corrupt executive from Dayton Hudson Coal who funnels black powder from mine inventories to western Pennsylvania, where criminals use it to intimidate and punish their targets.

Lucille Getner, Emil’s wife and the brain behind the conspiracy. She is beautiful and drinks too much, carries a pistol in her purse is tied in to organized crime near Johnstown, Pa. and is deeply lonely because of her husband’s attraction to other men.

Angel Cordner, a criminal in the western part of the state and Emil Getner’s lover. They meet frequently at a bar in Johnstown called “The Cave of the Fallen Angel,” where Trooper Morgan and his girlfriend, Mary Von Linden, visit to jiggerbug even as the trooper is collecting intelligence about Cordner’s black powder business.