Description:
A newly discovered manuscript of an 1890s pistol-packing police reporter chronicles wild times, terrible tragedy and sudden millionaires on 'the richest hill on earth'.
Brief description: William Lambrecht is a writer and editor living in Maryland. He was a political and investigative reporter in Illinois and Washington D.C. for several decades, co-founder of New Bay Times/Bay Weekly newspaper, a visiting professional at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and presently a parter in New Bay Books, a publishing house.
Review Quotes:
"Horace Herbert Smith take you to Butte, Montana, in its copper-mining heyday to experience that brawling, big-hearted time. In a series of vivid snapshots Smith, a Butte newspaperman, describes the 1890s when, as he writes, life there "was fast and fun." Smith died before he could publish his absorbing and entertaining memoir detailing daytime gun battles and a sermonizing standoff, the high life and labor strife, scoundrels and bullwhackers and still-breathing corpses, with a cast of real-life characters so colorful as to make fiction writers despair. Fortunately for the reader, Smith's manuscript is finally seeing print. It's a rare treat."
-Gwen Florio
Journalist, author of the Lola Wicks crime series and other books
"What a rip-snorter of a story! Hell With the Lid Off is a spectacular contribution to the history of one of the greatest towns in the West."
-David McCumber
Editor, The Montana Standard; author The Cowboy Way and other books.
"The discovery of a lifetime."
- Darrell Ehrlich
Editor-in-Chief, Daily Montanan