NEW YORK – Nov. 28, 2015 – PRLog — Sunbury Press has released Murder in Tuxedo Park, William E. Lemanski’s first novel, set in late Victorian New York state.
The wealthy, gated community of Tuxedo Park, in upstate New York, has been home to many of America’s financial titans and social luminaries for over one hundred years. However, during the later nineteenth century, this staid, secluded enclave became the stalking-ground for one of America’s most heinous, early serial killers. The murder and mayhem continued unabated until an eccentric and brilliant young scientist and his alluring new acquaintance began their pursuit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
William E. Lemanski, a Viet Nam combat veteran, has a former engineering background in the nuclear power industry. Since retiring from both the New York Power Authority and Entergy Nuclear Northeast, he has been a freelance journalist in the Hudson Valley of New York, has held public office as a councilman and served as a police commissioner in the Town of Tuxedo, New York. When not researching new book material, he spends time traveling the world on various big-game hunting expeditions.
EXCERPT:
The long, narrow, serpentine road curved beneath the overhanging trees in dappled shadows as it wound through the quiet forest. Barely noticeable in the shadows, a large, stately mansion, will occasionally emerge, setback a distance from the road and shielded by a stone wall or iron gate or a barrier of yew. Some with sprawling gardens, others with boathouses fronting the lake and still others with courtyards and horse stables.
The imposing structures were the abodes of the rich and influential titans of Wall Street and the sporting class of the early 20th Century. The gated enclave of Tuxedo Park, nestled in the Ramapo Hills, a mere thirty miles north of Manhattan, was one of the first planned communities in the country as well as one of the most affluent. And why not, after all, the new elegant dinner jacket worn by the upper class and heads of state is named after Tuxedo. This new look in fashion occurred when the New York gossip columnists would swoon over the Hamptons in the summer along with the Autumn Ball and winter sports of Tuxedo Park as the seasons revolved. The Park was even the national epicenter of that ancient, arcane and elitist sport called court tennis, not to mention the home of some of the nation’s finest thoroughbred racehorses.
Author William Lemanski relaxes in his Tuxedo Park residence.
Originally created as a forested playground by tobacco magnate, Pierre Lorillard, the uniqueness of the Park became just as eccentric as some of its inhabitants. Aside from its thousands of acres of stonewalled seclusion, it boasted miles of electric street lighting and its own electric generating plant while over ninety-nine percent of the country still burned gas lamps. Just outside its imposing stone entry on the Post Road, a small community, actually a company town was established to house the hundreds of European laborers imported by Lorillard to build his many miles of roads and stone fencing and who also served as the maids, butlers and general staff of the Park’s inhabitants.
One of which, I became.
***
Perhaps one of its most eccentric and brilliant property owners was James I. Montague-Smith, who was referred to as Monti. His middle name was bestowed in honor of the famous British engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the brilliant and equally eccentric 19th Century character who built the Great Western Railway and the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship. Monti’s father was a British expatriate who, besides working with Brunel in the early years, became a colleague of Nicola Tesla, Edison and many other of the shining stars of 19th Century electrical science. Although also an engineer, Monti’s father focused more on the economic growth of the technology and became fabulously wealthy accruing a fortune from his many business interests.
Monti, although holding degrees in medicine and engineering, lived as a country squire and relied on his vast inheritance while spending his time dabbling in various experiments in his Tuxedo Park laboratory. Curiosity was his driving force having never found a diversion that wouldn’t interest him. His twelve-hour days were spent sequestered in his lab pursuing arcane investigations into obscure and sometimes bizarre topics. Science fiction was not his forte, but rather he questioned “by what force would a pencil drop to the floor?” And why would mass exert attraction to other mass, and just what defined the nature of one’s spirit, and so on into many of the inexplicable and esoteric phenomena of nature’s mysteries.
Murder in Tuxedo Park
Authored by William E Lemanski
List Price: $14.95
5.5″ x 8.5″ (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Black & White on White paper
136 pages
Sunbury Press, Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-1620066997
ISBN-10: 1620066998
BISAC: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Historical
Coming Soon on Kindle
For more information, please see:
http://www.sunburypressstore.com/Murder-in-Tuxedo-Park-97…
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