Overview

A nameless killer moves along the rail lines of post-Civil War America-depots, stockyards, boardinghouses-always one town ahead of the law. Newspapers call him the Petticoat Butcher. Pinkerton agents Edward Hart and Teddy Meachman call him by another name: Jimmy Ward. From Indiana battlefields to the boom towns of the 1880s and '90s, the chase tightens. Farmer-veteran Peter Cornelius, who once knew Ward in uniform, becomes the case's quiet center-answering hard questions while the agents sort rumor from truth and bodies from headlines. A stint in the Kansas State Penitentiary only hardens Ward and sharpens his patience; iron doors teach him how to wait, and waiting becomes a weapon. Then comes Elizabeth. In a brief, startling calm, Ward falls in love with a woman who believes a man can lay down his old life like a worn coat. For a moment, the tracks go quiet. But old habits and older wounds do not die easily, and the agents know it. Told in taut, unflinching prose, The Petticoat Butcher is a relentless historical thriller across Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas-a portrait of a nation rebuilding, a man unraveling, and the investigators who refuse to let the dead go unanswered. For readers of gritty historical crime and true-crime-adjacent fiction, this is the hunt you won't put down.

Full Product Details

9798349644825

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

SCOTT HAMELE is a prolific Kansas City-based novelist with over twenty books, whose work spans historical and biographical thrillers, near-future suspense, and speculative fiction. He blends cinematic pacing with research-driven authenticity-real streets, tight timelines, lived-in backstories. Sci-fi fan favorites include Vision Protocol, Dustwings - Black Ops, The Clearborn Society, and The Paper Candidate. In historical fiction, his completed novels include Capone's North Road, The Petticoat Butcher, Hanna's Room, Promise in the Sky, Hitler Survives, Staff of Moses, Orchard of Secrets, Dust & Honor, and Kentucky Whiskey Barons. Near-future suspense novels include Books 1-3 in the Kincaid Doctrine Series: Merchants of Venom, Justice Storm, Blue Coast Authority, and IRONHALO.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available