Seventeen years ago, Robert Gorham Fuller Jr., a high-powered, Ivy League-educated Maine lawyer and former Navy captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps, wrote a serviceable, self-published detective novel about a man who was shot to death by a single bullet to the head. Most likely, the book was read by the author’s family and friends, who probably found copies under the Christmas tree.

Then, on February 14, 2026, Fuller, now 87 and retired, was shot to death by a single bullet to the head at his senior-living facility in Potomac, Maryland. In a shocking example of life imitating art, Fuller’s heretofore forgotten vanity project, Unnatural Deaths, became the subject of media scrutiny and public curiosity.

Immediately after the murder, a law-enforcement officer called the situation “the mystery of the mystery writer.” The actual crime could be fodder for another novel. Video surveillance at Fuller’s residence showed a person of interest — what looked to be a man poorly disguised as a woman in a plaid coat and scraggly, long-haired wig — leaving the scene. A week later, a 22-year-old Baltimore man, Maurquise Emillo James, was arrested following a traffic stop (his silver Infiniti sedan had no license plates), during which he allegedly fired at police in an attempt to flee. The recovered 9mm shell casing matched that of the gun used to kill Fuller.

James was a medication technician in the facility where Fuller lived and was allegedly inside Fuller’s apartment dispensing pills the night before the murder. Fuller was a millionaire known for philanthropy: He gave $1.64 million to an Augusta, Maine, high school for an athletic complex, and he’d donated to a library, a medical center, a shelter for women veterans, the YMCA, and a local historical society. A Maine legislator described Fuller as “one of the most important benefactors in modern Augusta.”

Yet nothing of value appears to have been stolen from his apartment, leaving police stumped as to a motive. Nonetheless, James was charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Fuller’s novel begins with the shooting of a man who resembles the man Fuller was in life. The fictional deceased, Harvey Coburn, was a pillar of the eponymous Coburn, the town named for his great-grandfather, who, in 1871, started the Coburn Shoe Company, on which stood the fortunes of the local populace. In the 1980s, as competitors fled overseas in search of cheap labor, Coburn Shoe was dying, and Harvey half-heartedly entertained offers from buyers he knew would shut down the factory, turning Coburn into a ghost town.

No spoilers here. By page two, we know Coburn’s killer will be Salvatore Salvaggio, a hit man for the Ciccilino crime family of Bergen County, New Jersey. We learn on page six that Harvey gets whacked en route to a fishing trip with friends.

Unfortunately, the Ciccilino mob is plagued by bad actors and bad luck. After plugging Harvey, Salvaggio bumps into Blackie Pelletier, a factory worker and brother of high-powered local lawyer Larry Pelletier, who’s had one too many cups of tea with his aged mother and desperately pulls off to the side of the road to relieve himself. Killer and urinator accidentally come face-to-face; fearing he could be identified, Salvaggio shoots Blackie, too.

Later, a younger, undisciplined mob accomplice, facing hard time in Jersey’s rough Rahway State Prison on a drug rap, won’t be able to keep Salvaggio’s secrets when the FBI comes calling. (Soon, a few random murders are thrown in for good measure.)

The motive for killing Coburn is to get him out of the way so his siblings, who couldn’t care less about the shoe factory, will sell it to the Russian mob, which wants to manufacture bogus vitamins there to launder money. The Italian mob does the Russians’ dirtier work — for a price. The “mystery” isn’t whodunit or why, but how the local police, the FBI, and Interpol will put their heads and skillsets together to unravel the plot.

Here, Fuller has done his homework; he does a yeoman’s job of explaining how the law-enforcement sausage is made. He also has a good handle on mob life. Clearly, he spent a lot of time either working as an attorney in the criminal-law space or reading about how high-level crimes get solved.

The author knows, for instance, that after every interview or action, FBI agents file detailed reports known as “302s.” His ear for authenticity helps him describe how the first thing a low-level Jersey mobster wannabe and snitch does when released from jail is pick up the Newark Star-Ledger, order a pizza, crack open a beer, and wait for the inevitable explosion when he goes to start his car.

Where Fuller’s ear turns tin is with the dialogue, which sounds phony. When the wife of the Coburn police chief learns of the murders, Fuller writes, “Gisele’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, poor Mrs. Coburn!’ she said. ‘And young Harvey and Laura!’” An unprintable epithet would’ve been far more likely to have flown from her mouth upon hearing the shocking news.

Fuller’s work, while not Pulitzer worthy, is entertaining and believable. We don’t know why he chose to self-publish his novel when it could’ve found a home with a small commercial press. What we do know is that Maurquise James awaits trial in a Maryland jail cell for a crime that has no obvious motive; Fuller’s family and friends mourn their loss; community leaders in Maine miss a generous philanthropist; and readers of detective fiction will never again hear from a once-promising author.

Diane Kiesel is a former judge of the Supreme Court of New York. Her latest book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law, was published in 2025 by the University of Michigan Press and is the winner of the 2026 PROSE Award for biography from the Association of American Publishers.