Rhys Bowen — readers who love the Molly Murphy series for its combination of sharp period atmosphere and a protagonist who has survived things that should have broken her — and keeps choosing to stand up anyway — will feel immediately at home with Delores Bailey in Pony Gulch’s gold fields.
Anna Lee Huber — if you’re drawn to historical mysteries where the investigation is personal as well as procedural — where the detective has genuine skin in the game and something real to lose — the emotional stakes in the Lady Darby series echo what Decter does in Stamp Mill Murder, where Delores’s instinct to protect a vulnerable child runs directly against her need to stay invisible.
Victoria Thompson — for readers who love historical mysteries built around the women and children who fall through the cracks of a world organized around men’s interests, Thompson’s Gaslight series and Stamp Mill Murder share a quiet fury at the same injustices — and heroines who refuse to look the other way.
Stamp mills The Strawberry Stamp Mill at the heart of this novel was a real place. Henry Elling and William Morris — two leading citizens of Virginia City — bought the Boss Tweed-Clipper mines in 1880, and in 1883 Elling erected a stone twenty-stamp mill on the site. By 1900, Butte investors had leased the Strawberry and erected a ten-stamp mill on the creek nearby. The mill that Delores delivers moonshine to, that the men work around the clock, that crushes the gold-rich quartz out of the mountain — and eventually crushes a man — is grounded in documented local history.
Stamp mills were four-story industrial structures that used gravity to move ore from top to bottom through a crushing process. Heavy iron stamps, raised and dropped by a camshaft, pulverized the ore continuously. The noise carried twenty miles. Working near them for a shift meant coming home deaf, coated in ore dust, and thirsty — which is why Delores’s delivery route included the Strawberry Mill as a regular stop. Sherilyn Decter worked with the Granite County Museum to get the mechanics and atmosphere right.
Pony Gulch — the real Pony, Montana Pony Gulch in the Moonshiner Mysteries is drawn from the real town of Pony, Montana, a small gold-mining community in the Tobacco Root Mountains. The citizens of Pony — including members of the Pony Homecoming Club and the Montana Historical Society — shared their knowledge and memories to help bring the town to life. Sherilyn Decter took some geographic liberties with the landscape, but the texture of daily life, the social dynamics of a small mining community, and the relationship between the town and the surrounding wilderness are rooted in what that place actually was.
Writing Nipper One of the recurring characters in Stamp Mill Murder is Nipper, a young man whose stutter shapes how he moves through the world — what he can say, when he says it, and how people receive him. Getting his voice right mattered. Sherilyn Decter consulted with the Canadian Stuttering Association to ensure that Nipper’s speech patterns, his internal experience, and the way other characters respond to him were portrayed with accuracy and respect. He is one of the more carefully researched characters in the series precisely because his difference is central to who he is, not incidental to the plot.
Charlie Chaplin Charlie has been Delores’s imaginary companion since Big Sky Murder — a coping mechanism rooted in the childhood trauma explored across the Bootleggers’ and Moonshiner series. In Stamp Mill Murder, as Delores grows more self-aware and builds real relationships, Charlie’s role shifts. Sherilyn Decter has followed both the man and his films throughout the writing of this series, threading period-appropriate details from his life and movies into each book. He appears when Delores needs him — whether she knows she needs him or not.
Stamp Mill Murder is the second book in the Moonshiner Mysteries. Start with Big Sky Murder or explore the full series.
Curious about Lash — the silver wolf who rides in Delores’s truck bed and keeps her honest? His full story is told in Lash, a free novella for newsletter subscribers.
Delores Bailey’s origin story — her years in Philadelphia before Montana — runs through Books Two and Three of the Bootleggers’ Chronicles. If Stamp Mill Murder made you curious about where Delores came from, that’s where to find it.
