Meet the baddest of the bad on Nov. 5 in Frankfort, KY

One of Kentucky’s baddest bad men is being resurrected at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort Saturday, November 5 —baddest of the bad if you believed the press of the day, but a hero to the downtrodden if you listened to the poor and the powerless.

John Fallis is his name.  He was the King of Craw—the notorious red-light district in Kentucky’s capital city that flourished during the Roaring Twenties and was famous all the way down to New Orleans for its wild and licentious ways. He was a political power, a gambler, a bootlegger, a legitimate merchant, and a charismatic Lothario who brooked no insult, would not be pushed around, who bent a knee to no man.

The men who ran the town thought him Lucifer unleashed. The common folk thought him their protector and benefactor. His rise and fall is the stuff of which legends are made. Which the new book Concerning The Matter Of The King Of Craw attempts, for the first time, to draw out and illuminate. Its formal release is set for the opening of the Kentucky Book Fair at Frankfort’s Convention Center, Saturday, November 5. Ron Rhody, a Pinehurst, NC resident, who wrote it, grew up in the Capital City where stories about John Fallis are still being told.

Concerning The Matter Of The King Of Craw is a work of fiction, for no formal biography exits, but it is based on fact and hews as close to the actual record as such a record exists The book begins with the night of the Big Shoot-Out when he takes on the entire city police force and ends with him dead on a craps table in Craw in what the newspapers deemed the aftermath of an argument over a game of dice, but which many believe was a hit ordered by powerful members of the city’s elite.

The Kentucky Book Fair, operated by the Kentucky Humanities Council and the Kentucky Book Fair Board, is one of the biggest in the Southeast. It regularly attracts a crowd of 3,000 or more and this year will host 170 regional and national authors. It is set for the Frankfort Convention Center, hours nine to four-thirty, Saturday, November 5, 2016.

CONCERNING THE MATTER OF THE KING OF CRAW can be ordered from our bookstore for $11.99.

He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.

List Price: $16.99

6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General