Phineas Strange

Hey there, Thanks for finding your way here. This all started when I was eleven years old and stumbled onto the books of Frank Edwards — an Indianapolis radio broadcaster who spent his life collecting the strange, the documented, and the unexplained. He didn’t dress it up. He just laid it out and let reality speak for itself. I’ve never really gotten over him. As I got older, a different obsession took hold — the whys of true crime. What made killers do what they did. How they thought about their victims. Capote’s In Cold Blood, Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, and Rule’s A Stranger Beside Me led my list. The best true crime, I came to believe, isn’t really about the killer at all — it’s about everyone else caught in the wreckage. I didn’t start writing until I was 69. Since then I’ve completed twelve novels under the name Michael McDonald, six volumes of A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, and I’m currently working on Stone Walls & Steeples — a true crime series moving through New England, one state at a time. You’ll see those books appearing here over the next few months. I grew up in the Midwest, lived overseas for twelve years, and have spent the better half of my life here in New England — where I raised my family, walked the same streets where some of these stories happened, and became quietly obsessed with everything this region keeps to itself. If you’re the kind of person who pulls the thread, even when you probably shouldn’t — welcome. You’re in the right place. — Phineas Strange