Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Who Do You Think You Are?

There is something deeply moving about great historic moments falling out of living memory. The nation mourned the death of Harry Patch will remember VE Day on the home front, from street parties to an extra day off school! As we approach the 80th anniversary of the end of war in Europe, let's make sure that we record those memories. Remembering the times when we worked and celebrated together for a common purpose has never felt more important. In this special issue we explore how the cessation of war was anything but a simple process for those serving in Europe (page 14). We also look at what it meant to those at home (page 56), including those who couldn't share in the general jubilation. Unfortunately, the war wasn't over for…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST WOMEN AT WAR In Janet Few's article about researching your female line in the March issue, she wrote, “it is only recently that women have been allowed to join the armed forces” but, unless by “recently” she means within the past 100 years, that is not strictly true. On its excellent website nam.ac.uk, the National Army Museum states of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) formed in 1917 that this “was the first time women had served in the British Army other than as nurses”. Some 57,000 women joined up between 1917 and 1921, my eldest aunt included. A smaller number joined the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the Women's Air Force (WRAF). In the Second World War women…

Rosemary Collins reports on the latest data releases and genealogy news Almost 11 million records from West Dunbartonshire in Scotland have been added to Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk). The records have been published by the firm thanks to a new partnership with West Dunbartonshire Council. Councillor William Rooney, the council's convenor of corporate services, explained that the records’ digitisation was “a transformative moment in historical research and public access for West Dunbartonshire”. The material includes three sets of index-only parish records held by West Dunbartonshire Arts & Heritage Service: 4,991,735 baptism records (1615–1854), 3,150,429 marriage records (1615–1845) and 497,944 burial records (1655–1854). They cover modern-day Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire, Argyll, Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire. Ancestry has also added indexonly sets of 1,821,383 valuation-roll records (1855–1930) and 280,033 burial register and memorial-inscription records (1855–2024). The following…

Funding has been announced for a new museum across two sites in Northern Ireland, telling the story of the 350-year history of soldiers from the island of Ireland in the British Army. The organisers of UNTOLD: Stories of the Irish in the British Army have been granted initial development funding of £249,239 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and will apply for a full grant of £1,721,595 at a later date. The museum will be located in a former linen warehouse at 28 Bedford Street, Belfast, and in Enniskillen Castle, and is due to open in summer 2027. UNITE will also have an online platform allowing further access to its collections. The organisers explained that the museum would be an “allisland, all-community” project incorporating the collections of the Inniskillings Museum,…

Anyone with a surname as unusual as Jeff Guyett's is bound to be curious about where it came from. Although this was one of the driving forces behind his foray into genealogy, it turned out that it wasn't the most interesting thing about his family. He was astounded to discover stories of bigamy and suicide, a journalist with royal connections, and a musical military man with rather mysterious origins. Jeff's interest in family history was also piqued by his paternal grandmother Vera (née Oakley). “She'd always said that the Oakleys were special.” Back in the 1980s, Jeff had spoken to his grandparents to find out why. “I took down some details, but had to stop because my grandmother started getting upset.” Jeff, who lives in Uffculme in Devon, started looking…

John Jardine was born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, in 1844 and he attended Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English Verse. He passed the examinations for the Indian Civil Service in 1863, and the following year he became a covenanted civil servant in the Bombay Presidency. Jardine became a collector (administrative official) and magistrate at various places around Bombay, and he eventually become a judge in the 1870s. On furlough in 1880 he married Minnie Hogg at the Savoy Chapel in the City of Westminster, London. He was appointed as a judicial commissioner to Burma in 1878, and researched and wrote guidance on Burmese law that was used by British judges in the country. Back in Bombay Jardine became chief secretary…

BOOKS An Introduction to British Ships in Indian Waters, 2nd Edn Richard Morgan FIBIS, 2017 FIBIS's second research guide covers vessels owned by the East India Company, merchant ships privately owned by European ‘free mariners’ (‘country ships’), and unauthorised vessels. Researching Ancestors in the East India Company Armies Peter A Bailey FIBIS, 2006 The society's first research guide covers officers and men up to 1860. Researching Ancestors in the Indian Army, 1858–1947 Peter A Bailey FIBIS, 2014 Bailey has also written FIBIS's third research guide. Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors Emma Jolly Pen & Sword, 2012 Jolly explains the range of records for researchers. WEBSITES ANCESTRY w bit.ly/anc-eic-reg Ancestry's database ‘UK, Registers of Employees of the East India Company and the India Office, 1746–1939’ contains 643,303 records. FAMILYSEARCH w tinyurl.com/fs-wiki-ind…

JOHN HAMPDEN SOCIETY w johnhampden.org Hampden was one of the leading architects of the resistance to Charles I's arbitrary rule during the years leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. The society's website includes a family tree and advice for genealogists. NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM w nam.ac.uk/subjects/british-civil-wars This web page includes a detailed illustrated timeline, in addition to written accounts from various eyewitnesses. NATIONAL CIVIL WAR CENTRE w nationalcivilwarcentre.com Find out more about the Newark-on-Trent museum's projects, upcoming events and some of the objects preserved here – including a 1646 siege map of the town on vellum. PARLIAMENTARY ARCHIVES w archives.parliament.uk Here you can explore 500 years of parliamentary history and view surviving Protestation Returns from 1642, when every adult male had to swear an oath of allegiance to…

BOOK Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors Simon Wills Pen & Sword, 2012 The fifth chapter of this guide written by a muchmissed contributor to this magazine, ‘Captains and Other Officers’, discusses a wide range of useful sources including masters’ and mates’ certificates. MUSEUMS AND ARCHIVES CAIRD LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE a National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, London SE10 9NF t 020 8312 6516 e library@rmg.co.uk w rmg.co.uk/collections/caird-library The library has many resources for the Merchant Navy, including masters’ and mates’ certificates and supporting papers. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond TW9 4DU w nationalarchives.gov.uk TNA has produced 13 guides related to the material available for researching ancestors in the Merchant Navy, which you can access via tinyurl.com/tna-guides-m.…

Q I'm researching my great grandfather, John X [name withheld for privacy]. I recently got his death certificate and discovered it was signed by a Michael Joseph X, relation son, whom none of us knew anything about. I'm trying to find out what happened to Michael, but can't find any trace of him. Can you help? Alicia Barney A Finding living relatives in Ireland can be difficult. I would recommend trying to establish when Michael was born to determine his age today. Do you know when John married and the maiden name of his wife? You can search the Irish civil birth indexes up to 1958 at FamilySearch (family search.org) for free, and on Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). Look for births registered under your great grandfather's surname and the mother's…

ELLIS ISLAND PASSENGER SEARCH w heritage.statueofliberty.org/passenger Here you can search 65 million records of immigrants to Ellis Island in New York Harbor. If you can't find your family, try other ports such as Philadelphia. FAMILY SEARCH w bit.ly/fs-us-census-1790 The first United States Federal Population Census was taken in 1790, and there have been returns every decade since. Many are freely available on FamilySearch. FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk The postal and telephone directories, family histories and almanacs on Findmypast can reveal your immigrant forebears’ professions and land holdings.…

In 1814 flour miller Jeremiah Colman took over a mustard-manufacturing business at the Stoke Holy Cross Mill just south of Norwich. The firm eventually moved to Carrow in the south-east of the city, starting a subsidised school for employees’ children, as well as sports clubs and a canteen. The company has been owned by Unilever since 1995, and the factory at Carrow closed in 2020. Norfolk Record Office's holdings include a run of the quarterly Carrow Works Magazine, containing hundreds of articles and photos of staff.…

MILITARY HISTORY Tim Grady Yale University Press, 384 pages, £25 In October 1939 the bodies of two German airmen, killed carrying out one of the first air raids of the Second World War, were recovered from the Firth of Forth in Scotland. They were laid in coffins draped with swastikas, put on display in a local church, then solemnly marched through crowdlined streets for burial at Portobello Cemetery, east of Edinburgh. Such scenes seem remarkable today, but this book is full of memorable vignettes that describe how the people of Britain and Germany dealt with the enemy dead during the two world wars. The dead were not always combatants. Many were prisoners of war held in camps. Others were civilians – Germans and Britons in each other's countries who were…

ASK AGRA agra.org.uk/podcasts In this podcast from the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA), panels of experts discuss everything you need to know to research your family history. Topics include getting started, military research, DNA testing, and taking your research further by using archives or commissioning a researcher. JOURNEY THROUGH TIME Podcast services and YouTube The presenter of BBC Two's A House Through Time David Olusoga has joined forces with fellow historian Sarah Churchwell to launch a podcast with Goalhanger, the company behind such popular podcasts as The Rest Is History. Episodes include the 1916 Black Tom explosion – a forgotten terror attack on New York, the devastating 1703 Great Storm in Britain, the Great Exhibition of 1851, and female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. MENTIONED IN…

As a subscriber and avid watcher of the TV programme I thought I would share one of my own projects, especially relevant as we approach the 80th anniversary of VE Day. In May we will be publishing the diaries of my grandfather S John Teague, who was just 17 when war broke out (he lived to be 100, dying in 2022). He was transferred to the air-raid control centre in Camberwell Town Hall, and during the Blitz was tasked with requisitioning houses and rehoming bombed-out families. He later served in the RAF as a wireless mechanic and was stationed across Europe, returning home in 1946. While compiling the diaries (which span 1938–1946) we discovered a batch of letters from 1945 from his parents. In May 1945 he wrote the following…

This month we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, to be followed in August by events marking the end of the war in the Far East. People of my generation were born in the aftermath of the war. Just as my parents grew up in the 1930s in the shadow of the First World War, so many of us children of the 1950s and early 1960s could not fail to be aware of the terrors and horrors and turmoil of what had taken place only a few years before we were born. I first learnt about the war in all sorts of small ways. Into the 1960s in suburban Surrey, where I grew up, they still tested the air-raid sirens every month…

BOOKS In the Ruins of the Reich Douglas Botting HarperCollins, 1985 Botting relates, in detail, the early years of occupied Germany. Opening the Gates of Hell Mark Hodkinson Cassell, 2024 Hodkinson describes the desperate situation in Germany in early 1945. The German Occupation of the Channel Islands Charles Cruickshank Guernsey Press Co. Ltd, 1975 This title can be freely borrowed from the Internet Archive via tinyurl.com/arch-germ-chan. WEBSITES AIR GUNNER BOB GILL DFM w tinyurl.com/air-gunner-bob-repat This page reveals the experiences of a member of Bomber Command during Operation Exodus. IWM COLLECTIONS w iwm.org.uk/collections Many of the Imperial War Museums’ photos, books and reminiscences regarding the occupation of Austria and Germany have been digitised. MILITARY HISTORY ONLINE w militaryhistoryonline.com/WWII/SAARF Find out more about the work of the units sent to make contact…

BOOK 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire Rebecca Rideal John Murray, 2017 Find out more about a particularly dangerous year in British history, including the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Coffers, Clysters, Comfrey and Coifs Janet Few Family History Partnership, 2012 Janet's guide explores the lives of our 17th-century ancestors. The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain lan Mortimer Vintage, 2018 Vintage, 2018 This bestseller reveals what daily life was like during the 1600s, including what people ate and how they dressed. WEBSITES HISTORY EXTRA w tinyurl.com/history-extra-stuart-ordinary The official website of BBC History Magazine includes a fascinating article by Andrea Zuvich about life in Stuart Britain for ordinary people. Note that free registration is required. MONGENES w mongenes.org.uk/epidemics_in_bri.html “The friendly family history website for the County of Monmouthshire, Wales” includes this timeline of…

BOOK History of the East Surrey Regiment Vol. 1, 1702–1914 Colonel Hugh W Pearse Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd, 1916 Histories of individual regiments can provide valuable information about your ancestor's army service. This title includes details about the history, movements and battles that the 70th Foot (later the East Surrey Regiment) were involved in, and is available for free from the Internet Archive at tinyurl.com/arch-pearse). Also, you can read Richard Cannon's Historical Record of the Seventieth, or the Surrey Regiment of Foot (Parker, Furnivall & Parker, 1849) for free via Project Gutenberg (tinyurl.com/guten-cannon). WEBSITES BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk You may find an obituary for your forebear in a newspaper. Some of the longer ones provide rich detail, including the names of relatives who attended the funeral. William Henry…

QI'm researching Edward Alfred Kemp (born 1881), who served in the Royal Navy during the First World War. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1919, but I cannot find out why. It was listed in the London Gazette on 1 April 1919. The events leading up to this award must have been chronicled somewhere. Georgina Milligan AI was able to find some information in The National Archives at Kew (TNA; nationalarchives.gov.uk) about the awarding of the Croix de Guerre to Edward Alfred Kemp. Firstly, I consulted the index to Admiralty correspondence for 1918, and found a reference in ADM 12/1596B indicating letters relating to the award dated 7 August. Sadly, the actual documentation hasn't survived, so I turned my attention to Foreign Office correspondence. Again, I found an…

Q A few years ago, I inherited some photographs, including this portrait of one of my great grandmother's children, which wasn't labelled. Her sons were born in 1896, 1898, 1905, 1908, 1916 and 1918. Can you estimate a decade for when it was taken, so that I can try to work out who it is? Kim Thompson A This is a professional studio photograph taken during the interwar era, when many families acquired home cameras and began taking casual outdoor ‘snapshots’, but still visited a local studio for higher-quality portraits. We have no photographer/studio name to research and the style of card mount is rather ‘timeless’, but we can determine an accurate timeframe from the visual image. The relatively relaxed pose of this boy – who sits on a table,…

Q I am trying to locate the birth certificate of William Hamilton (also known as William George Hamilton) born c1868. On the 1901 census, he is noted as being born in Brentford; the 1911 census states London; and “St James St Garden (?), London” is on the 1921 census. He married Mary Ann Doran in Ireland in 1891 and the record notes that he is a soldier, and his father was also named William Hamilton. I have searched birth entries for the London area and have three potential matches, none of which seems to be the right one. They include: a birth in the Kensington district, born 31 March 1866, died 16 April 1866, parents: William Hamilton and Emily Mobbs; another in the St Martin-in-the-Fields district, born 23 May 1867,…

We've all struggled with old handwritten documents. Even when the handwriting is easy to read, there's still the laborious task of manually transcribing them into digital form to share with others or add to our online trees. Software programs like GenScriber (https://genscriber.com/download/) can help make this process less daunting, but it's inevitably very labour-intensive. Such projects are perfect fodder for artificial intelligence (AI). Most AI tools offer some form of handwriting recognition, but in this article we're going to focus on ChatGPT. It's simple to use: just upload a scan or image of your document. It can transcribe both typewritten and handwritten text within the same document, and attempts to preserve simple formatting like bullet points and lists. It's not an exact science – depending on the quality of the…

BOOKS Our Hidden Lives: The Everyday Diaries of a Forgotten Britain 1945–1948 Simon Garfield Ebury Press, 2004 Garfield shares the story of five ordinary Britons – an office worker, an antiques dealer, a housewife, an accountant and a pensioner – through their wartime diaries, full of entertaining personal accounts and preoccupations. The Day the War Ended Martin Gilbert HarperCollins, 1995 The book is a panorama of 8 May around the globe with extensive coverage of Britain, including scores of personal recollections collected by the author. Wartime Women: A Mass Observation Anthology, 1937–45 Dorothy Sheridan (editor) Phoenix Press, 2000 This book is a compilation of diaries, research reports, letters and questionnaires of women's experience in the Second World War, and can be borrowed for free from the Internet Archive via tinyurl.com/arch-war-wom.…

SOCIAL HISTORY Blessin Adams, William Collins, 304 pages, £16.99 In the early modern period, women were expected to conform to societal expectations of conventional feminine behaviour. The standards demanded of women were very different from those required of men. In this book, historian and former police officer Blessin Adams examines the lives of nine women who shunned gender stereotypes and sought to assert themselves through violent acts, often having been pushed to extremes by the actions of men. In a time when female murderers were rare, their crimes were greeted with a combination of salacious fascination and horror. Adams’ diligent research, using sources familiar to genealogists, sheds light on the lives, provocation and motivations of the women she writes about. We learn of two Plymouth servants who poisoned their mistress…

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? USA BBC iPlayer Streaming now Running for 11 seasons between 2010 and 2022, the US version of WDYTYA? brought together an impressive array of celebrities. And, while it looks unlikely that the programme will return, many of the shows are well worth revisiting. Happily in this context, BBC Four recently showed a selection of the best episodes, which are now also available to stream via BBC iPlayer. Highlights include the episode featuring soul legend Smokey Robinson, who hunts for answers as to why one of his grandfathers, a pastor who became caught up in a divorce lawsuit, disappeared from his children's lives. The episode featuring Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings, The Leftovers) is also worth another look, as the actor uncovers stories of…

One of our readers sent in a query this month regarding an Irish relative (‘Q&A’, page 48), and our expert Nicola Morris found useful clues in local newspapers online. It was a reminder that, as the digitisation of closer to the present day. Inspired by Nicola's answer I searched the newspaper archive on Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk), and I found my father mentioned in an article from 2002! It can be hard to trace more recent relatives as so many records are closed under privacy laws. Newspapers, however, are a handy exception.…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk to feature your event here for free PICK OF THE MONTH Learn how to improve your research skills at this Merseyside event THE FAMILY HISTORY SHOW 3 May a Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool w thefamilyhistoryshow.com/liverpool/ The Family History Show comes to Liverpool in May. As usual, there will be a programme of expert talks, including ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ by Jackie Depelle, ‘Breaking Down Brick Walls in Your Family History Research’ by Mark Bayley, ‘Tracing Your Industrial Labourer Ancestors’ by Nick Barratt (pictured) and ‘Taking Your DNA Results Further’ by regular WDYTYA? Magazine contributor Debbie Kennett. There will also be the chance to book a free one-to-one consultation for help with brick walls, with experts on topics including family history, house history, DNA and military history. You can visit stalls from…

The complete archive of Soldier, the official magazine of the British Army launched during the Second World War, is now free to read online. The Army published the back issues on soldier.army.mod.uk/archive to mark the magazine's 80th birthday. Soldier was launched on 19 March 1945 as the brainchild of ‘Monty’, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and was intended to boost the morale of soldiers serving in Europe. In a “Message From the Chief” on the cover of the first issue Monty assures readers that “By no possible conceivable chance can Germany win this war”, adding that he hopes that the “comradeship” between the “great armies” of the war will be “a powerful influence in the difficult days that will lie ahead when the fighting is over”. Soldier features news, puzzles and…

1945 3 May Under the headline “Resistance Ends in Berlin” The Times announces the Russian capture of the city, as well as Hitler's and Joseph Goebbels’ suicides. 7 May At the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Reims, north-east France, surrenders to General Eisenhower on behalf of the German Army. 8 May At the HQ of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin the final instrument of surrender is signed. British paratroopers land in Norway to complete liberation. 26 July Labour wins the General Election held three weeks earlier with a substantial majority. Clement Attlee replaces Winston Churchill as prime minister, but vows to continue the war with Japan. 2 August The Potsdam Conference between Attlee, Harry S Truman and Joseph Stalin that began on 17 July concludes, and…

Trade has always been important to Britain, and in 1600 the East India Company (EIC) was established by royal charter during the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I. Factories (settlements) were set up along the country's coast. When Charles II received Bombay (now Mumbai) as part of the dowry of his wife Catherine of Braganza in 1662, the king decided to transfer control of the city to the EIC, and it became the company's base. In 1670 the EIC was granted powers to raise armies and rule the land it had acquired. Three main factories were formed in Bombay, Fort St George (which became Madras – now Chennai) and on the Hooghly River which became known as Calcutta (now Kolkata). The company was given a monopoly of trade…

The World Turned Upside Down (www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk) takes its name from a famous Civil War ballad, first published in the 1640s on a broadside protesting Parliament's outlawing traditional Christmas celebrations. This is a fairly new website, which aims to tell the stories of “people, events and ideas of the Civil War”. It isn't designed specifically for genealogists, but it's full of content that will help anyone trying to gain a broader sense of exactly what was going on. The website hosts fortnightly podcasts featuring leading historians. One recent example is Women and Cromwell's Navy – the Hidden Story, a succinct but fascinating examination of a little-known subject from Elaine Murphy of the University of Plymouth. Other episodes look at the growing division between the New Model Army and Parliament at the…

1 NAME, &C. The first section contains key genealogical information including the officer's full name Sidney Conduit Brown, usual home address, and date and place of birth. 2 PARTICULARS This section reveals the officer's current qualification – the previous grade attained is second mate. You can use the reference number on the left (“05070”) to find Sidney in the index to certificate names (BT 127) at The National Archives. 3 CERTIFICATE NOW REQUIRED Here we see the grade being applied for (in this case first mate), and type of vessel. 4 PREVIOUS EXAMINATION The candidate was asked to complete this section if he had previously failed an examination for the required certificate. 5 DECLARATION Note the signature of the candidate; the handwriting looks like the text on the rest of the form, indicating a level…

Last November, my son James George and his American partner Monica visited her family in Chicago, Illinois, for Thanksgiving. This reminded me of a mystery in my husband Steve's genealogy, which I solved many years ago. MY BRICK WALL In 1993, I stood outside the last known address of Steve's relation Sampson George at Earby Cottage, Newsham, north Yorkshire, and wondered where on Earth he had gone. Sampson was Steve's 3x great grand uncle, and he was born in 1789 in Middleton Tyas, north Yorkshire. Sampson's father, also named Sampson, was a wealthy lawyer who worked for Sir John Penistone Milbanke, whose cousin Anne later married the poet Lord Byron. As a child, Sampson played with Anne when his father visited Sir John on business, and Sampson senior's will named…

DIRECTORIES w bit.ly/special-norfolk The University of Leicester's digitised directories include 14 volumes for Norfolk, published between 1839 and 1912. NORWICH CENSUS w bit.ly/arch-norwich-census In late 1570 the Norwich authorities undertook a census of the city's poor, which you can access via this volume which was published by Norfolk Record Society and is available on the Internet Archive. HISTORIC MAPS w tinyurl.com/norf-cc-maps You can use the county council's Norfolk Historic Map Explorer to view Ordnance Survey, aerial, tithe maps and enclosures. NONCONFORMIST RECORDS w tinyurl.com/fs-nonconform FamilySearch has Norfolk nonconformist records (1613-1901) and parish register (1510-1997). See tinyurl.com/fs-wiki-norf for the wiki. PARISH REGISTERS w freereg.org.uk At time of writing FreeREG has 6,473,814 records for Norfolk, comprising 3,596,913 baptisms, 2,129,794 burials and 747,107 marriages.…

Every year, more than two million people visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London to see the largest and most diverse botanical collection in the world. The organisation transferred from royal ownership to national ownership in 1840, and its first curator was John Smith. The Kew Gardens Archives holds many records from its long history, including a List of Gardeners kept by Smith in the 19th century. It is a valuable insight into the ordinary men who worked to make the gardens so beautiful, says assistant archivist Isabel Lauterjung. WHAT IS THE LIST OF GARDENERS? The List of Gardeners is a volume documenting all of the gardeners who were employed in some capacity at Kew Gardens between 1842 and 1868. It was kept by John Smith (1798–1888), who…

FICTION NATHAN DYLAN GOODWIN, 353 pages, £12.99 This is a novel concerning the methodology used to solve a cold case known to the Los Angeles Police Department as that of the ‘Hollywood Strangler’ – a serial killer, still believed to be at large, whose victims were film starlets and whose modus operandi included posing the bodies in grotesque depictions of a scene from one of the films in which they appeared. Madison ‘Maddie’ Scott-Barnhart and her team are faced with the challenge of solving these cases. Using fragments of 40-year-old DNA, combined with well-tried genealogical sources from well-known websites, they meticulously bring their researches to a successful conclusion. The characters are well chosen and their relationships develop amid a plethora of factual information. Although described as a work of fiction,…