BETTY BRANDT PASSICK is an independent author, inspirational speaker, and teacher. She grew up in the small town of Fairbank, Iowa (population 1,000), where few people would expect the idea for a gangster series, yet this is where she has drawn inspiration for her historical crime novels. Gangster in Our Midst, Bookkeeper, Lieutenant, and Sometimes Hitman for Al Capone (2017) tells the neglected fact-based story of an Italian-American mobster who came to her hometown (called ‘Oxbow’ in the series) in the 1920s, where he remained off and on for the next sixty years. During the pandemic, she returned to ‘Oxbow’ to write The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse, Murder on the Prairie (2021) to tell an earlier piece of the Iowa gangster story – the backstory of the family who built Hotel Wiltse, a prominent setting in Gangster in Our Midst. Dr. Wiltse, who is attracted to murder investigations, finds his black bag allows him into places where others may not go – and soon finds himself at the center of horrific murders. Her novels have won Indie Book awards. (Book #3 in the series will follow in mid-2025.) The series won a 2025 Editor’s Choice Award of Literary Excellence from Reader’s House book review magazine in the UK. She attributes her success to using a unique cross-genre that utilizes elements of fiction and nonfiction to tell her stories.

She launched her career as an author after retiring from a Fortune 500 company a decade ago. In addition to writing novels, her poems, short stories, and novellas regularly appear in anthologies and magazines. She writes a “Gangster” Blog; a column for her hometown newspaper, the Fairbank Islander. In 2023 she launched the annual Wapsie Writing Contest to encourage adults, teens, and children (in particular) to write creatively. She is a member of local, state, and national mystery crime writers’ organizations, and has a B.A. Degree in Public Relations.

Betty is married, and she and her husband enjoy rescuing Bichon Frise dogs — “though truth be told,” she notes, “the dogs have really rescued us…leading us to explore greater depths of patience and kindness for animals…and for people.” 

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© 2017 Betty Brandt Passick. All rights reserved.