Murder & Mayhem in Indiana

by Keven McQueen

With an eye for bizarre, macabre detail, Keven McQueen tracks down seventeen true crimes and unsolved mysteries in this collection of historic Hoosier homicides. This grim collection of tales includes unimaginable incidents like the Indianapolis businessman whose car contained suspicious hams and the man who handed his new bride a drink of carbolic acid. It also reveals the tragedy of Gary's beautiful Arlene Draves, killed by her football player boyfriend, as well as a surprisingly comic courtroom revelation by Hammond's Hazel McNally that cleared her of all charges. Author Keven McQueen is an instructor in the Department of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of twelve books on biography, history, folklore, ghost lore, natural disasters and historical true crime.

Genres: True Crime, History

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2014

About the author

More information about Keven McQueen is available at his official website, http://www.kevenmcqueenstories.com/

Reviews

[Shelby Doré · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book while visiting Evansville, IN for work. I went to a local Walgreens to stock up my hotel room with snacks and drinks and saw an endcap of local history books. Having been on the longest true crime kick I’ve ever been on, I just had to grab this one.

The author is very colorful and imaginative, making even the less interesting cases more interesting with his insights. I do wish that more of the cases were more recent. Most of the ones in this book happened in the late 1800-early 1900’s.

It was really cool reading about local history, and even history about the areas I’m familiar with like Jeffersonville and New Albany. It’s a weird feeling knowing that I’ve nonchalantly passed the scene of a bank robbery resulting in at least one death, or passed by the local jail (even delivering pizza there a couple of times) mentioned in more than one of these historical true crime tales. I recommend this book to other Indiana true crime fans.
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[Irish_I_was_reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not my genre, sorta, but it was extremely interesting! I could tell the author put a lot of time into researching each case, and was trying to find all the information he could on the cases. I love how he put some psychological aspects into it, as well as the corruption of the courts throughout the cases. He had the crime scenes, and the court proceedings, so detailed! The crime scenes were explained so detailed that it was gory and gruesome. I love that when he did the research into the cases, he included some pictures of the victims, suspects, location the victim was found, and even had quotes from witnesses and such.

All around, if you’re into reading about murders and such, I highly suggest this book!

[Ally Hecht · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of any of the cases McQueen chose to cover in the book which was exciting. I think it’s important to not only focus on the famous cases but also the everyday individuals, so his work on these cases is important. His writing style is very informal, but still seems to cover the facts of each case adequately. I do, however, wish there would have been an introduction explaining why these specific cases were chosen. Additionally, I feel the text could have benefitted from being organized either chronologically or geographically. A map may have also been helpful for visualization purposes. Overall, it was a super quick and interesting read.

[Alexandra Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book. The writing was good. Super witty. Very funny. I wish the stories had covered a wider timeline. Some of the stories were not that crazy and I wasn’t sure why it was chosen vs. other murders in Indiana that I know are more outlandish. Overall fun Indiana read though!

[Skyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murder stories

[Tisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very interesting and hard to put down

[Erica Amerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written like a middle school book report. Terrible

[Sundae Mortland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being from Indiana I enjoyed reading this book and learned about murders I had never heard about.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre and grisly murder tales are a guilty-pleasure genre' of mine and I'm obviously not alone. This author serves them up just the way I like them, with humor and witty sarcasm.