Robin Yocum watched his father come home from a West Virginia steel mill black with fly ash and soot and thought, There’s got to be an easier way to make a living. When he discovered that writing required no heavy lifting and offered virtually zero chance of falling into a ladle of molten steel, he signed up. Yocum is proud of his Ohio River Valley roots and sets his fiction in eastern Ohio, near his boyhood home of Brilliant. A former award-winning crime reporter with the Columbus Dispatch, he has published two true-crime books and five novels. A Brilliant Death was a finalist for both the 2017 Edgar and the Silver Falchion Award for Best Adult Mystery. Favorite Sons was named the 2011 Book of the Year for Mystery/Suspense by USA Book News. Yocum is a proud graduate of Bowling Green State University, where he received a degree in journalism that prevented an untimely and fiery death in the steel mill.
• When I’m asked where I get the ideas for my stories, I offer this honest answer: I have no earthly idea. How does one explain imagination and the creative process? My brain is always pinballing with ideas.
With that said, I was no stranger to the presence of the mob while growing up in the Ohio River Valley. The Youngstown mob controlled the prostitution and gambling in Steubenville. It was the worst-kept secret ever. The whorehouses lined Water Street, and gambling was everywhere. Literally everywhere. I could get football spot sheets at my high school. I’m not even sure I knew they were illegal.
That’s where my protagonist, Angelo, was born in my imagination. He was a product of a system that thrived in the Ohio Valley when the steel mills were at their zenith. My late father said that the reason the Ohio Valley economy boomed was because the 60,000 steelworkers who lived and worked there spent every dime they made. A portion of those paychecks went for prostitutes and gambling. But when the mills died, there was no money for playing the daily number or the spot sheets, and there was certainly not enough money for a turn with the girls on Water Street. With no profits to be had, the mob retreated from the valley.
When that happened, I remember wondering what became of the old guard, the low-level mobsters, bagmen, and enforcers who made their money protecting the prostitutes, collecting debts, and breaking bones. You know, doing mob stuff. Does the mob have a retirement plan or offer severance packages? I’m betting no.
As the story unfolds, that’s where we find Angelo. He’s an admitted dinosaur who has lost his usefulness to the family. The story explores my version of what happens when a longstanding member of the mob is no longer mission critical. I can’t image it would be good.