Murder Plays a Ukulele
At some point or another, most of us in the ukulele community have seen this picture: It is the illustration that accompanied the article Murder Plays A Ukulele by M.K. Arnold, published in the July 1941 issue of Master Detective Magazine. Subtitled, “A ukulele – an abandoned car – and a bicycle on the beach . . . smart detective work linked them together and nabbed the killer.” The picture itself is more than a bit off, as the two main characters were only a couple years different in age, both in their early 20’s, and both played the ukulele. This isn’t a work of fiction, it is a true story! But it took my librarian sister, Sarah Howard, almost a year to unearth a copy of the article in the Library of Congress and get it to me. Frederick David Galloway was born in New York in 1902 and lived…