"Dead Innocence" by John Dandola is the Thirteenth Tony Del Plato Novel

GLOUCESTER, Mass. - July 3, 2025 - PRLog -- The synopsis:

During the 1940's, the mob began realizing that professionally produced pornographic movies could be profitable. To avoid the continued use of over-aged strippers in grainy homemade stag films, fresh-faced college girls were sought. Pornography was illegal but the jurisdiction remained vague between local and federal enforcement. When, in 1944, pornographic casting overtures begin on the campus of Patty Drury's college, Tony Del Plato travels to Massachusetts and investigates.

What is remarkable about John Dandola as a writer isn't just his storytelling talent or his ability to capture the feeling of everyday life in the past or his explanations of how movies were made on film long before the advent of digital and CGI. What is truly remarkable is that he can also capture the naturalness of children and teenagers through their path to maturity the way it existed in America up until at least the mid-1960's. Older readers can identify with that. But it's the well-rounded characters which always propel Dandola's stories. From college students to college professors to mobsters to Tony's thirteen-year-old son, there's not a single false note.

How does he do that?

"I've always studied people. I've learned to determine what makes them tick and how they'll behave. When I had psychology in college, it was all second nature to me," explains Dandola. "That's the basis for creating a fictional character. If I include someone from real life in my stories, it's easy because I report what I see and it's done as a compliment to schoolmates and neighbors. If it's a real person from history, I read and study about him or her. Somehow, the real person comes through—at least that's what their descendants have told me."

Even more accuracy permeates Dandola's settings in that he uses actual stores and shops which existed in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the 1940's giving the reader a real feel of the place.

Dead Innocence is 312 pages and priced at $18.95. Following the lead of so many other small  publishing houses, it is not available at Amazon.com. For easy and secure publisher-direct sales go to https://www.quincannongroup.com/DelPlatoMysteries.html.