Betty Brandt Passick is a multi-award-winning author of a gangster series, which began with the story of Louie La Cava, a Chicago mobster who came to her hometown of Fairbank, Iowa (called ‘Oxbow’ in the novels) in the early 1920s, where he remained on and off for the next 60 years. Gangster in Our Midst, Book 1, recently won the 2025 Editor’s Choice Award of Literary Excellence from Reader’s House book review magazine in the UK. The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse, Book 2, won an Indie Book Award from Shelf Unbound book review magazine in the USA. Her most recent book in the gangster series is Anatomy of a Death.