News Flash: Silver Rush book #8 has a title!

 Taking a break from Slang-o-rama to announce some bookish news: the eighth book in my Silver Rush historical mystery series has a title!

THE SECRET IN THE WALL

Photo by Ann Parker
Location: Bodie, California

It's early 1882 in San Francisco, and Inez Stannert has forged a partnership to purchase an abandoned house that needs work, but has "good bones." Renovations begin, and, uh-oh, what do they find lurking in the darkness and the shadows, behind the weathered planks? I'm not telling, because...

... it's a secret. 😉

Look for THE SECRET IN THE WALL to come your way in February 2022, courtesy of the good folks at Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks. 

Interrupting Slang-o-rama for Silver Rush Book #7 - we have a cover!

Silver Rush Book #7 is around the corner, scheduled for release in February 2020 by the Poisoned Pen Press imprint of Sourcebooks.

Mortal Music is the title, and here is the short description that is currently floating around the internet:

In this new adventure in the award-winning Silver Rush mystery series, Inez Stannert must track down a murderer before he silences a famous vocalist--forever.

Mortal Music is set in San Francisco, same as A Dying Note.
And now, if you would like to see the cover, just scroll on down...
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>Keep scrolling! (Gotta build the tension, ya know...)
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Almost there!
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And... (curtains, up) here it is!

The vocalist in question is nicknamed "The Golden Songbird."
See that feather in the cage? Yep, it's a mystery!

 You can pre-order at all the usual places: Indiebound, amazon, Barnes and Noble and so on.

Slang-o-rama will return next week.

Wishing all U.S. readers a pleasant 4th of July! And keep on singing!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Pettifogger

Now here's a word for the times: pettifogger (or, pettifoggery, pettifogging, etc.). Having just spent a weekend in the city of fog (i.e., San Francisco), this bit of slang caught my attention. Before I looked it up, I tried to guess what it might mean...
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... My guess was it meant something along the line of chicanery (a word I might just have to feature next week). According to the Etymology Online entry for pettifogger, I was at least in the neighborhood:

pettifogger (n): 1560s, from petty; the second element possibly from obsolete Dutch focker, from Flemish focken "to cheat," or from cognate Middle English fugger, from Fugger the renowned family of merchants and financiers of 15c.-16c. Augsburg. In German, Flemish and Dutch, the name became a word for "monopolist, rich man, usurer."

A 'petty Fugger' would mean one who on a small scale practices the dishonourable devices for gain popularly attributed to great financiers; it seems possible that the phrase 'petty fogger of the law,' applied in this sense to some notorious person, may have caught the popular fancy. [OED first edition, in a rare burst of pure speculation]

However, OED also calls attention to pettifactor "legal agent who undertakes small cases" (1580s), which, though attested slightly later, might be the source of this. Related: Pettifoggery.

My old reliable Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition) gives first use of pettifogger at 1576 (well, who's quibbling over a few years, here) and defines it thus:

1. a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable: shyster. 2. one given to quibbling over trifles.

Shyster pretty much rubs elbows with chicanery, don'tcha think? Stay tuned for next week, when I tackle the etymology of chicanery...

Pettifoggers? Hardly.
[From Wikimedia: "The Curse of California." Tinted lithograph. This two-page illustration portrays the powerful railroad monopoly as an octopus, with its many tentacles controlling such financial interests as the elite of Nob Hill, farmers, lumber interests, shipping, fruit growers, stage lines, mining, and the wine industry. By George Frederick Keller - The Wasp, August 19, 1882, vol. 9. No. 316, pp. 520-521.Image taken from California History (Spring 1991), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67545687]