Synopsis
Many believe Victorian Halifax to have been a backwater of sleepy provincialism, far from the great centres of power in Europe and America. And yet, out of this seemingly quiet port city of the mid-1800s, came one of the most devious criminal terrorists of the nineteenth century; a man related by birth to one of the city’s most respected businessmen, and looked upon as a model Halifax citizen. This is the intriguing and stunning story of Alexander “Sandy” Keith Jr. and his clandestine career as a Confederate secret agent who plotted some of the most nefarious acts of the American Civil War. A devious bomber who no doubt was responsible for the powerful gunpowder explosion that rocked Halifax Harbour in 1857, Keith graduated to much bigger scams and went on to earn the title of “Dynamite Fiend,” pulling off the appalling “crime of the century” in 1875. Sandy Keith’s uncle was none other than Alexander Keith, a prosperous Halifax brewer, banker, three-time mayor, and dean of the city’s many successful Scottish immigrants. After fleeing Halifax in the 1860s, the elusive “Sandy” Keith Jr. assumed a number of fake names and roles. In fact, Sandy Keith had become a ticking time bomb. Dogged by creditors and the victims of his frauds, Keith kept on the move, leaving more scams, schemes, and victims—many of them women—in his wake. As his situation became more desperate, his obsession with explosives and violence became more intense, leading to a horrifying plot that he put together while living in Germany posing as a prosperous American businessman. After killing eighty innocent people and injuring fifty more in a gigantic explosion on a dock in Bremerhaven, Keith earned the dubious title of “mass murderer” and became the first truly modern terrorist, creating panic and fear among the nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic steamship industry. In The Dynamite Fiend, author Ann Larabee unfolds this engrossing tale of hidden identity, technological obsession, and an unparalleled lust for power and profit. To uncover this true story of one the world’s most devious criminals, Larabee travelled to the Scottish Highlands, to Nova Scotia, and to Bremerhaven, Germany, where she uncovered the original Pinkerton files on the dynamite bombing and was able to establish that mass terrorist William King Thomas was none other than the chameleon Alexander “Sandy” Keith Jr. This incredible story will resonate strongly with the insecurities of our own time and the rise of global terrorism. It will be fascinating reading for anyone who sees that beneath the ordinary, everyday world, there lies the possibility of a sudden volcanic eruption.
About the Author
Ann Larabee is the author of Decade of Disaster and teaches American Studies at Michigan State University. She lives in East Lansing, Michigan.
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