Papantonio’s New Thriller Hits Home — And Close to Home—
Mike Papantonio has written legal thrillers ripped from the headlines before—the opioid crisis, cartel money laundering, and human trafficking. But his new novel, A Death in Arcadia, out today, hits differently. This one is personal, and it’s about something that is still happening.
The latest installment in Papantonio’s Deke Deketomis series centers on the so-called “troubled teen” industry — a network of privately run juvenile facilities where abuse, exploitation, and death have been documented for well over a century. The roots of the story run straight through our backyard: the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, where boys were beaten, sexually abused, and buried in unmarked graves from 1900 to 2011. Papantonio doesn’t let that history stay buried, either.
Real Cases
On the latest episode of We Don’t Color on the Dog, I sat down with Mike for a conversation that covered the book, the real cases behind it, and why he believes the media has badly failed the children caught in this system. We also talked about Paris Hilton and what her story reveals about how this industry traps kids from every walk of life, not just the poor and forgotten.
What makes this conversation worth your time, beyond the book itself, is how candid Papantonio gets about the personal thread running through it. Deke’s childhood — bouncing between families, staying out of the foster care system by sheer will — mirrors Papantonio’s own upbringing in ways he rarely discusses publicly. He does here.
Give the episode a listen. Then pick up A Death in Arcadia. I promise you won’t put it down easily.
And if you want the full story on the book and the interview, watch for my feature in the March 5th edition of Inweekly. We go deeper into the real history behind the novel, the characters Papantonio built to carry it, and why this may be his most important book yet.
