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Southern Tier Life // ISSUE 02
Collection:
LOCAL AUTHORS Love of history leads to new book by Watkins Glen writer By CHRIS BREWSTER
Her second try met with better results – the Watkins Glen native’s book “Murder & Mayhem in the Finger Lakes” was published last September through Arcadia Publishing.
At age 5, Rikki Marcin wrote and illustrated her first book. Her first stab at publishing, at age 10, was unsuccessful.
Marcin, the editor of The Watkins Review & Express and The Observer, found her book subjects through her jobs. Author Rikki Marcin “Part of my job consists of searching through newspapers from 150, 125, 100, 50 and 25 years ago for The Review’s “From the Files” section,” said Marcin, who has degrees from Elmira College (BA in languages) and Binghamton University (MA in French Literature). “Often I would encounter paragraphs about murders that took place in nearby counties, and my curiosity was piqued. I researched them in greater depth, and when I learned there were no publications on the subject of murders in the Finger Lakes, I considered the possibility of assembling a number of cases for a book.” From there, Marcin reached out to the History Press, which has published a number of books on various local and regional history topics across the country, including – luckily – notorious murders. “In March 2019,” she said, “I submitted a chapter I’d written on
