The Titanic Murders (31 page)
Other relatively recent books, taking more specialized looks at the
Titanic
story, were also of help:
Down with the Old Canoe—A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster
(1996), Steven Biel;
Her Name Titanic
(1988), Charles Pellegrino;
The Titanic Conspiracy
(1995), Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Vat;
Titanic—Destination Disaster
(1987/1996), John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas;
The Titanic Disaster
(1997), Dave Bryceson (the story as reported in the British press);
The Titanic—End of a Dream
(1986), Wyn Craig Wade; and
Total Titanic
(1998), Marc Shapiro.
A number of biographies and studies of society in the early 1900s were consulted, including:
The Age of the Moguls
(1953), Stephen H. Holbrook;
And the Price Is Right
(1958), Margaret Case Harriman (the story of the Strauses and Macy’s department store);
The Astors
(1941), Harvey O’Connor;
The Astors
(1979), Virginia Cowles;
The Astor Family
(1981), John D. Gates;
The Case of Eliza Armstrong—A Child of 13 Bought for 5 Pounds
(1974), Alison Plowden (the W. T. Stead “white slavery” case);
Crusader in Babylon—W. T. Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette
(1972), Raymond Schults;
The Guggenheims—An American Epic
(1978), John H. Davis;
The Guggenheims—The Making of an American Dynasty
(1976), Harvey O’Connor;
The Guggenheims and the American Dream
(1967), Edwin P. Hoyt, Jr.;
Peggy—The Wayward Guggenheim
(1986), Jacqueline Bograd Weld;
The Inheritors
(1962), John Tebbel;
My Father
(1913), Estelle W. Stead; and
Who Killed Society
(1960), Cleveland Amory. Also useful was a March 15, 1998,
People Magazine
article, “Sunken Dreams” by Jeffrey Wells, Joanna Blonska and Jason Lynch.
Further material on W. T. Stead was culled from
The Wreck of the Titanic Foretold?
(1998), edited by Martin Gardener, reprinting Morgan Robertson’s prophetic
The Wreck of the Titan
(originally published as
Futility
) as well as Stead’s own prophetic sea-disaster writings.
Midway through the writing of this novel, by which time I had become intimate with the material via research, I went for a third time to James Cameron’s
Titanic,
and was very impressed by the verisimilitude of the art direction and the quality of the screenwriter’s research. I also viewed several other
Titanic
films:
Titanic
(1953);
A Night to Remember
(1958);
S.O.S. Titanic
(1979); and the television miniseries
Titanic
(1996). Surprisingly, every one of these productions has its merits, most obviously the adaptation of the Lord book; all but the first of these (and even it’s not bad) take pains to be accurate, and the mini-series in particular is underrated and has art direction that rivals Cameron’s, despite a considerably smaller budget.
In addition, I screened numerous documentaries, the most useful of which was A&E’s
Titanic
(1994) written and directed by Melissa Peltier; others viewed included
Secrets of the Titanic
(1997) written and directed by Dennis B. Kaye, codirected by Dr. Robert D. Ballard;
Titanic
(1997) written by Linda Cooper and produced by Dick Arlett;
Titanic: Secrets Revealed
(1998) written by Lois DeCosia and directed by John Tindall;
The Titanic Tragedy
(1997) written by Tom Gredishar, Randy Jackson and Mariangela Malespin, directed by Geoff Chadwick; and Ray Johnson’s
Titanic Remembered
(1992) and
Echoes of Titanic
(1995).
My talented wife, mystery writer Barbara Collins—the May to my Jack—helped me through this difficult, demanding project, providing frequent impromptu library trips, poring over
blueprints and photos in an attempt to help her directionally dyslexic husband find his way around the ship, and offering insightful criticism and needed praise, while keeping a constant lookout for looming bergs, growlers and field ice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit: Bamford Studio
Max Allan Collins is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Road to Perdition
and multiple award-winning novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations, and historical fiction. He has scripted the
Dick Tracy
comic strip,
Batman
comic books, and written tie-in novels based on the
CSI, Bones,
and
Dark Angel
TV series; collaborated with legendary mystery author Mickey Spillane; and authored numerous mystery series including Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and the bestselling Nathan Heller historical thrillers. His additional
Disaster
series mystery novels include
The Lusitania Murders,
The
Hindenburg Murders, The Pearl Harbor Murders, The London Blitz Murders,
and
The War of the Worlds Murder.
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