Murder in Old Manhattan | Frank Bonham | Podcast

Murder in Old Manhattan | Frank Bonham | Podcast

From Nightshade Diary by M.P. Pellicer

March 17, 2026 · 38 min

About this episode

The episode explores the challenges faced by a detective in 1857 who had to navigate human nature without the knowledge of fingerprints.

​A detective of 1857 didn’t know about fingerprints, and he had to learn a lot about human nature. | Narrated by M.P. Pellicer Frank Bonham was born into a family of writers. His grandfather, a gold camp judge, and his mother were poets. He wrote his first two stories at the age of ten. He suffered from asthma, and while convalescing from an attack, he started to write short stories and submit them to pulp magazines. Phantom Detective Magazine accepted his fourteenth submission. In his first two years as a writer, he produced 100 stories and sold only seven. He worked for a couple of years as a ghost writer for Ed Earl Repp, but then moved on to become a freelance writer, turning out Western stories as he had done for Repp. Eventually, he moved to Hollywood and wrote television scripts and mystery stories. By the time he died in 1989, he had written some five hundred short stories, novellas, and novels. One of his best-known works was the award-winning Durango Street. Host - M.P. Pellicer www.MPPellicer.com SUPPORT VIA DONATION Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11 Miami Ghost Chronicles: www.MiamiGhostChronicles.com Nightshade Diary: www.NightshadeDiary.com…

People in this episode

Host: M.P. Pellicer

Topics covered

  • detective story
  • 1857
  • human nature
  • writing
  • mystery

Keywords

  • Murder in Old Manhattan
  • Frank Bonham
  • detective
  • 1857
  • human nature
  • mystery stories
  • writing career

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Durango Street

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