Another helpful source of information was Neal Gabler's 2006 biography, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). This volume was particularly valuable in its descriptions of the trip Disney and Ward Kimball took to the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. Also, as mentioned above, Gabler stressed the fair's importance in helping to form the moviemaker's vision of Disneyland and of the company's subsequent theme parks.
In addition, a tip of the hat to longtime friend, poker-playing colleague, and ace competitive marksman Ray Rausch, who was helpful with details relating to the vintage firearms that played a role in the narrative.
And last but by no means least, a salute to my publisher, Karen Syed of Echelon Press, for her unfailing support and encouragement and her high standards, which have spurred me to be a better writer and storyteller–I hope!–than before I began toiling in Echelon's vineyard.
Through his mystery-loving mother, Robert Goldsborough became hooked on Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries while still in his teens, eventually reading all of the 70-plus adventures featuring the rotund, orchid-growing, beer-swilling, gourmet-food-loving genius and his irreverent and free-wheeling assistant, Archie Goodwin.
After Stout's death in 1975, Goldsborough decided to write a Wolfe story for his mother. That novel, "Murder in E Minor," eventually got published by Bantam Books, followed by six other Wolfe tales. But as much as Goldsborough enjoyed writing these murder mysteries, he longed to create his own character. Thus was born Steve "Snap" Malek, a wisecracking Chicago Tribune police reporter who just may bear some resemblance to Archie Goodwin.
Goldsborough, himself a former Tribune reporter and editor, has set his Malek stories in the 1930s and '40s, in part because of his interest in Chicago history and the intriguing characters who have passed through the rough-and-tumble metropolis. The reporter frequently finds himself in historical situations interacting with such personalities as Al Capone, legendary actress Helen Hayes, baseball great Dizzy Dean, eccentric architect Frank Lloyd Wright, film pioneer Walt Disney, and atom bomb physicist Enrico Fermi. Through it all, Malek remains unimpressed by celebrity and far more interested in scoops–to the point where he frequently finds himself in deadly peril. But as Goldsborough points out, newspaper reporters are supposed to be intrepid.
Terror at the Fair (A Snap Malek Mystery) Page 19