Frank Ladd

An early lesson Article continues after advertisement My father’s den was a small dark room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed tight with crime paperbacks. I spent hours going over the spines. Hammett, Christie, McBain, Gardner, Spillane, Woolrich, Simenon, Creasey, Stout. It was the scene of my earliest education in detective fiction. Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald got pride of place on his shelves. Low and easy for a child to reach.

I spent a decade with Ed Gein. Article continues after advertisement Not the real Ed Gein—he died in 1984 in a Wisconsin psychiatric hospital. I spent my decade with the archival Ed Gein: interrogation transcripts, psychiatric evaluations, newspaper accounts from the local papers, and the two definitive biographies by Harold Schechter and Judge Robert Gollmar.

Researchers say book bans can actually lead to a book getting more eyes on its pages. The study by Carnegie Mellon University and George Mason University found that circulations of books rose after they were banned by an average of 12%. Carnegie Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Uttara Ananthakrishnan tells KMOX it seems to be linked to high visibility on social media.