Red Maguire, newsman crime fighter, investigates a string of odd murders in Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

¶ Attention readers: Mystery of the Purple Roses is now published in paperback ($16.95) and e-book ($2.99) versions.

Buy! Mystery of the Purple Roses

Murder is his job.

The veteran crime reporter at a fictional newspaper in Butte, Montana, writes about a series of murders that shake the Mining City in 1954. Kieran “Red” Maguire turns out story after story on his battered typewriter as the killer remains at large. In Mystery of the Purple Roses, Maguire becomes a sleuth, tracking evidence to its improbable conclusion.

Butte’s rough-and-tumble history provides an alluring setting for a murder mystery.

Butte is a city of a million stories, a storm of hoarse working-class voices, all begging us to listen to what they have to say. I wrote Mystery of the Purple Roses with the old magazine-style pulp fiction genre in mind, taking the story to the dark streets where hard men and loose women ply their trade. I’m introducing Red Maguire, a humble newsman, as a character who can live through several novels set in Butte.

Here I am in the “chippy hoist” at the Steward Mine in Butte, Montana. Imagine sharing this small space with five other miners, sometimes more, for the journey deep below the surface.

From the back cover of Mystery of the Purple Roses:

“All through the summer of 1954 in Butte, Montana, a series of curious murders haunt Kieran “Red” Maguire, crime reporter for the Bugle daily newspaper. They appear to have nothing in common with one another except for a single purple rose placed on each victim. Red and his hard-nosed crime-fighting accomplice, police captain Harold “Duke” Ferndale, struggle to find clues that will solve a chilling mystery that terrifies residents of the Mining City. Red, a love-deprived but handsome Irishman, encounters adoring women, bare-knuckle criminals, outrageous characters who roam the streets, and a relentless Bugle editor who spares no murderous details so newsboys can bark lurid headlines in uptown bars. Through it all, Red copes with haunting memories of his pretty young mother, reminding the reader that no hero escapes the clutches of past regrets.”

Visit Butte to see for yourself

I decided to write the mystery novel after revisiting Butte. History screams from every street corner. Extensive photographic evidence already documents the city’s tumultuous past. I let my imagination fill in the rest. Butte was a city of characters – and still is, people born of a cultural spirit that spin tales faster than the rest of us can wonder at them. I wrote my novel not just for fun, but because of some strange compulsion to share in the Butte story. It feels like good manners, after visiting Butte, to write about the experience.

Buy! Mystery of the Purple Roses

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.