Exciting New Discovery!

Once again guest blogger Edson Stanley, esteemed assistant professor of letters at the University of South Dubuque at Dubuque comes to you this week, and he has exciting news!


Good evening.

As has been stated earlier, this blog is based on a series of notebooks discovered in 2008 in an old San Francisco home, the contents of which relate to Rocky Stone, a possibly fictional detective, whose exploits were featured on the back pages of a number of different detective magazines, most notably True Real Detective Magazine, beginning in 1949 and continuing on through the mid-1950's. My colleagues and I at the University of South Dubuque at Dubuque have been tasked with discovering the authenticity of purpose of said notebooks, but as yet, our results remain inconclusive, not only for this, but for their exact connection to the True Real Detective stories, or to the author of those stories, Adam Santeno. In fact, no other information on Santeno exists apart from his writings, which all deal with the aforementioned Rocky Stone.

However, thanks to the readers of this blog, some new light has been shed on these matters. Three weeks prior to this entry, Dorothy Devlin of Boise, Idaho sent an e-mail to Mr. Sanders stating:

“I found your blog through Facebook and my jaw dropped open. When we moved into our house seventeen years ago there was a cabinet in the basement the previous owners left behind. Myron (my husband) checked through the drawers, which were all empty except for a pile of papers in the bottom right hand. They were hand-written and very old. In the process of moving our furniture in and getting everything settled, we would go to bed each night, reading through these papers, which were detective stories, all written by a man who said his name was Rocky Stone! Can you believe it?!?!?

Myron and I enjoyed these over the years, but we never knew anything about them until we read your blog. Should I send them to you to find out if they relate to your notebooks?!?!?”

Soon after, Mr. Sanders put me in touch with Mrs. Devlin, and I made a trip to Boise to gather some more information. Sure enough, the handwriting matched the notebooks. I could not have been more pleased, but even more discoveries awaited. Although there were no years given, only dates, as was the case in the notebooks, a quick study of the contents revealed that these papers pre-date the original notebooks, relating to Rocky's early days as a detective, placing them in the year 1946 on the time line. In fact, the very first complete story, dated March 16th, states that it was Rocky Stone's first case following his days in the District Attorney's office.

We, meaning me and Mr. Sanders and my colleagues at USDD, are confident that these papers are from the same source as the original notebooks. However, none of the writings in this stack were ever published, so their connection to the mysterious Adam Santeno remains unknown. In the coming weeks, this blog will present for the first time in print the very first Rocky Stone detective story, which we have titled “The Crowded Streets.” Thanks so much to Myron and Dorothy Devlin for their help in this matter.

Good evening.