I’m a bestselling, award-winning author who specializes in historical true crime. I'm drawn to overlooked or forgotten stories – hidden gems from the attics of history, loaded with drama and insight and with plenty to tell us about the past and the present.

“Stranger Than Fiction,” my monthly column of true crime stories and reviews of the latest books in the genre, appears in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. My articles and book reviews have been published in Air Mail, The Irish Times, CrimeReads, the Chicago Review of Books, the Washington Independent Review of Books, the Southern Review of Books, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and many other magazines, newspapers, and web-based publications.

I’m a professor emeritus at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I’m a part-time instructor and cohort director in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. (BTW, my surname is pronounced like robe, not robb. It’s a long story.)

My latest book, A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Canadian bestseller, was released in June 2024 and tells the incredible true story of one of the world’s most successful jewel thieves. Arthur Barry charmed the elite of 1920s New York, brazenly swiped gems worth millions of dollars from their posh country estates, and outfoxed the police and private detectives on his trail. It’s The Great Gatsby meets Catch Me If You Can. David Grann, New York Times #1 bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon, calls it a “mesmerizing tale” and a “perfect jewel” of a book.

My previous book, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, published in 2021 by Algonquin Books and HarperCollins Canada, recreates Scotland Yard’s pursuit of Canadian serial killer Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, a ruthless poisoner who murdered as many as ten people in Chicago, Canada and London’s Lambeth neighbourhood between 1877 and 1892. It won the inaugural CrimeCon Clue Award for True Crime Book of the Year, was longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and received an Honourable Mention in the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year competition. The Times (UK) described it as “vividly written” and “a splendidly atmospheric journey through the halls of Victorian vice, virtue and, above all, hypocrisy.” It was a Washington Post pick as one of the Top 50 nonfiction books of 2021 and CrimeReads chose it as one of the Top 10 true crime books of the year.

Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation, also from Algonquin Books and HarperCollins Canada and published in 2015, is the saga of Chicago con man Leo Koretz. He was the Bernie Madoff of the 1920s, a slick Ponzi-scheme promoter the New York Times christened “the most resourceful confidence man in the United States.” The smooth-talking lawyer enticed hundreds of people to invest as much as $30 million – some $400 million today – in his imaginary Panamanian oil fields. The New York Times Book Review praised Empire of Deception as “intoxicating and impressively researched” and Esquire selected it as one of the 50 best biographies of all time.

Empire was the Chicago Writers Association’s 2015 Nonfiction Book of the Year, won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award and was a finalist for Canada’s top award for nonfiction – the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize. It also made the Globe and Mail and National Post Top 100 Books lists for 2015.

I’ve also compiled two collections of true crime stories from Nova Scotia’s colourful past for Pottersfield Press. Daring, Devious & Deadly: True Tales of Crime and Justice from Nova Scotia’s Past, includes 15 stories of piracy, bank robbery and murder and was a Nova Scotia bestseller in 2020. A sequel, Madness, Mayhem & Murder: More True Tales of Crime and Justice from Nova Scotia’s Past, presenting another 16 stories of thieves, killers, rumrunners, privateers and shadowy secret agents, was published in 2021.

In the fall of 2022 Nimbus Publishing released The Acadian Saga: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph, a revised and updated version of a book first published in 2005. It tells the dramatic story of the deportation in the 1750s of most of the French-speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia and how these refugees overcame exile and incredible hardships to establish today’s vibrant Acadian and Cajun cultures. The original edition was shortlisted for two prizes, the City of Dartmouth Book Award and Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Award for Nonfiction.

My comprehensive reference guide Media Law in Canada, 4th edition (Emond Publications 2023) demystifies the laws that affect how journalists, broadcasters, editors, and writers do their jobs and has been adopted as a core text for university and college journalism programs across the country. I am a co-author of Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press, 2015), the first comprehensive research guide for Canadian writers and journalists.

Calculated Risk: Greed, Politics and the Westray Tragedy, published in 1994, remains the most comprehensive account of the May 1992 explosion that killed 26 Nova Scotia coal miners – one of the worst workplace tragedies in recent Canadian history. Calculated Risk won the City of Dartmouth Book Award, was runner-up for the National Business Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Richardson award. The book was the basis for the critically acclaimed play Westray: The Long Way Home, which twice toured Canada, and I was a researcher and consultant for the Genie Award-winning National Film Board documentary, Westray.

I’m a member of the Crime Writers of Canada, the Writers Union of Canada, the Mystery Writers of America, the Crime Writers Association (UK), the Bookmakers of Toronto (Canada’s Sherlock Holmes society), and the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia. Check out my profile page and reviews and ratings of my books on Goodreads.

Journalism

My articles, commentaries, and book reviews have appeared in major publications, including Air Mail, the Chicago Tribune, The Irish Times, the Globe and Mail, CrimeReads, the National Post, the Toronto Star, Canadian Business, Canada’s History magazine, History Ireland, The Scotsman, the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Literary Review of Canada. I have also written for the Victoria Times-Colonist, Saltscapes magazine, Canadian Home & Country, Quill & Quire, Canadian Lawyer, The Lawyers Weekly and Northern Ireland’s Belfast Telegraph. I was on the staff of the Halifax Chronicle Herald for twenty years, where my roles included legal affairs reporter, investigative reporter, copy editor, morning edition editor, and columnist on politics and current affairs. My work has been shortlisted for Canada’s National Newspaper and National Magazine awards and I have won three Atlantic Journalism Awards.

Teaching & research

I am a professor in the School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing at the University of King’s College in Halifax, where I teach nonfiction writing and journalism. My interests include narrative nonfiction, investigative reporting, writing and editing, defamation and other forms of media law, journalists’ ethics, freedom of information, and the history of journalism. Defendants in defamation suits and publication ban prosecutions have retained me as an expert on journalism ethics and the standards of responsible journalism, and I have conducted professional development seminars for Rogers Media, the Canadian and Ontario community newspaper associations, and the Canadian Association of Journalists.

My academic research explores the origins of Canadian journalism and I have been invited to present my findings to academic conferences in Canada, the United States, France and the United Kingdom. I have published articles in the Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law and the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society Journal, and book reviews in American Journalism: A Journal of Media History and The Historian. I have a graduate degree in Atlantic Canada Studies (Saint Mary’s, 2008) and an undergraduate degree in Canadian Studies (Mount Allison, 1980). My MA thesis is titled “Creating Some Noise in the World': Press freedom and Canada’s First Newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, 1752-1761.” The Tantramar Heritage Trust published my BA thesis in 2007 under the title, The Life and Times of Josiah Wood: A Builder of Sackville.

chapters in books

“Telling True Stories: Creative Approaches to Bringing Nonfiction to Life,” in  Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative (Brill/Rodopi 2019)

“‘Written with Powers Truly Comick’: Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and the Birth of Social and Political Satire,” in The Funniest Pages: International Perspectives on Humor in Journalism (Peter Lang 2015)

“Deny, Delay, Deter, Defeat: Promise and Reality in Canada’s Access Regime,”
in FOI: Ten Years On: Freedom Fighting or Lazy Journalism? (Abramis UK 2015)

“Seeking Truth from Power: Strategies for Using Freedom of Information Laws,”
in Access to Information and Social Justice: Critical Research Strategies for Journalists,
Activists and Scholars (Arbeiter Ring Publishing/ARP 2015)

“The Rediscovery of Village Thibodeau,”
in Acadia Then and Now: A People’s History (Andrepont Publishing 2014)

“Why We Love to Hate Lawyers,” in Why Good Lawyers Matter (Irwin Law 2012)

“Bans on Publication and Other Media Restrictions,”
in From Crime to Punishment: An Introduction to the Criminal Law System (Carswell, 8th ed. 2014)

“Libel, Journalists, and the Online World,”
in The New Journalist: Roles, Skills, and Critical Thinking (Emond Publishing 2010)

“Legal Disaster: Westray and the Justice System,”
in The Westray Chronicles: A Case Study in Corporate Crime (Fernwood 1999)

“Sackville Promotes a Railway: The Politics of the New Brunswick and Prince Edward Railway, 1872-1886,” in People and Place: Studies of Small Town Life in the Maritimes (Acadiensis Press 1987)