Bruce Mowday

A comprehensive overview of the events of the Battle of Brandywine. The author gives a full overview of the actions, decisions, and events that ultimately caused the Americans the field of battle. A combination of being ill prepared, some bad luck, a lack of trustworthy intelligence, and some contradictory reports helped the Crowned forces to turn the Americans right flank. This resulted in the loss of the battle and Philadelphia, but taught the American army that they could stand against the greatest professional fighting force in the world, the British army.
A great read and a must for anyone studying the Philadelphia campaign.… (mere)

Stealing Wyeth is an account of the 1982 theft of fifteen art works from the home of Andrew Wyeth, by a criminal gang, and the subsequent recovery of them all several months later by the work of the FBI and state police. This criminal activity occurred in the same area as where I currently live, in "Wyeth country". As I am not a Pennsylvania native, it was fascinating to get a feel of what my local area was like back in the 1980s. I had no idea that home burglaries were all too common here, even in what would be considered better neighborhoods. One of the gang members was even a burglar alarm system installer by day, and his knowledge of systems only made it easier to disable them for break-ins. Yikes. Additionally, capturing the members of the gang responsible for this art theft helped to solve a lot of other crimes that had occurred in the area.

I do not know if people that are not familiar with this area, or who are not art aficionados, would find this book as interesting. But it is written well in an investigative journalism style. The author was actually a local journalist at the time of these incidents, and covered the case at the time. This book was published in 2018.… (mere)

A few years back I saw a movie loosely based on the Johnston Gang murders and I become curious about the real story behind the case. I found little information on the subject aside from Bruce Mowday's book "Jailing the Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murderers to Justice."

Unfortunately, the book is hardly readable. Mowday is determined to basically list everyone who was interviewed about the gang (along with where they live) and mention every police officer involved in the case by name. The book is extremely repetitive and does not tell the story in a way that someone with no knowledge of the case could follow.

I found the book so difficult to read that I gave up without finishing it.… (mere)