Ann Larabee

Alexander "Sandy" Keith Jr. was the consummate confidence man and bounder, apparently driven by little except the desire to garner the money needed to live in the style he wished to become accustom to. And for awhile he did, with riches gained from his involvement in blockade running to the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It all came to a bad end in 1875 when, driven to desperation by impending bankruptcy, Keith tried to commit insurance fraud by blowing up the steamer "Mosel" by a clockwork dynamite bomb, made a lethal botch of it, and then made a botch of his own suicide; though Keith took most of his secrets to the grave with him.

What those secrets might have been are the subject of this book, as the author traces the man's career from black sheep of a clan of brewers in Halifax to death as a notorious mass murderer in Bremen. The tale is one of a seemingly perfect sociopath who is essentially the missing link between the terrorist operations of the Confederacy (if only as an associate) and the more modern attacks of such national liberation organizations as the Irish Fenians and the Russian "People's Will." While one might wonder if Larabee indulges in a little too much speculation about Keith's mentality, it's hard not to, seeing as we are still afflicted by his ilk.… (meer)