My Grandfather's Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City Review

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My Grandfather's Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City ReviewMy Grandfather's Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City is more than just a a memoir-style accounting of family history - it is a true-life mystery unraveled, as author Richard A. Serano takes the readers on a tour through the events that led to his grandfather's alcoholism, arrest, solitary confinement in Kansas City jail, and sudden death due to a broken neck that the authorities who arrested him could not explain. When Serrano found his grandfather's death certificate from 1948, he discovered evidence of murder, which led him to investigate the whys and wherefores of how his grandfather died - and who had motive, means, and opportunity to kill him. A smoothly written, narrative-style yet real-life whodunnit sure to keep the reader's attention to the very last page, My Grandfather's Prison is highly recommended.My Grandfather's Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City OverviewJames Patrick Lyons abandoned his family for a life on Kansas City's skid row. A town drunk, he was arrested eighty times for public intoxication. On the night of his last arrest, he was taken to the city jail and held in solitary confinement. The next morning he was dead. Officials said it was natural causes - yet they could not explain his broken neck. When Richard Serrano learned of the grandfather he had never known, the longtime journalist embarked upon a search that led him deep into the city's wide-open and ignoble past. He stumbled upon his maternal grandfather's death certificate from 1948 and discovered that the evidence pointed to murder in that basement cell. That revelation triggered a blizzard of questions for Serrano and provided the impetus for this engrossing story. Part memoir, part investigative report, "My Grandfather's Prison" takes readers back to a crossroads year for Kansas City. The Great Depression and World War II were over, yet vestiges still lingered from the corrupt Pendergast political machine. The city jail itself was a throwback to the old lockups and rock piles of popular fiction, while the sheriff's office was dishonest and inept - and tried to cover up the death. Much has been written about Tom Pendergast and the iron hand with which he ruled Kansas City until his fall. Serrano's personal journey takes the story further into those crucial years when the city tried to shake off the yoke of machine politics and political corruption and step into a new era of reform. In his quest to uncover the details of his grandfather's life, Serrano re-creates the flavor of mid-twentieth-century Kansas City. He shows us real-life characters who broaden our understanding of the city's history: sheriffs and deputies, political bosses and coroners. And he also discovers a city filled with lost souls like James Lyons: the denizens of Kansas City's skid row, a neglected area near the river bottom that once housed the city's gilded community but now was home to derelicts and drunks. As Serrano gradually comes to terms with the darker side of his family history, he traces a parallel reconciliation of the city with its own sordid past. James Lyons died just as the old ways of the city were dying, and this spellbinding accounts shows how one town in one time struggled with its past to find a brighter future.

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