Overview

Stanwood Shot Dead! Death, Diplomacy, and the Dawn of American Power relates the true story of nineteenth-century adventurer Louis Duverge and his killing of American consular agent Victor Stanwood. Born to a wealthy family in Mauritius, Duverge attended university in France before joining the Foreign Legion. He then took to sea, leading a failed attempt to steal a cargo of gold from an Indian Ocean trading vessel. Duverge slipped away from authorities in British India and fled to Boston, where he joined the Union effort. Commissioned as a lieutenant with a Massachusetts regiment, Duverge saw combat during the twilight of the American Civil War. At the close of hostilities, he was assigned to provost duty in South Carolina, where Duverge landed in jail for fraud. He employed his exceptional charm and deviousness to not only escape prosecution but to eventually gain citizenship and a consular appointment with the State Department. Duverge soon abandoned his consular post, though, joining the famed Henry Stanley in an expedition to develop Congo on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. After a gunfight in the jungle went bad, Duverge traveled to Madagascar. There, a series of adventures would lead him to his final conflict: a shootout at the home of American consul Victor Stanwood. Duverge's eventual arrest for Stanwood's killing and his subsequent trial, as well as the extraordinary life that led to that event, give insight into America's place in the world then and today.

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Nick Pietrowicz spent twenty-three years as a special agent with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. Joining immediately after 9/11, his first tour to the New York Field Office was abbreviated when he volunteered to go to Port au Prince, Haiti. There, he protected the American Embassy and its staff following the collapse of President Aristide's government and the ensuing period of anarchy. Nick was then posted to the Miami Field Office, curtailing to volunteer for service in Kabul, Afghanistan. Arriving in the summer of 2006, he spent a year on the ambassador's protective detail while simultaneously managing the embassy's guard force. Nick was then assigned to Moldova, his first tour as an embassy chief of security, where he led an investigation into one of the largest nuclear material smuggling cases in the country's history. Nick followed this with an assignment to Chad, where he killed a black mamba with a can of WD-40 and handed out Chick-fil-A sauce on the Libyan border. His next overseas tour was to Luanda, Angola, which included substantial travel throughout the country and the rest of Africa. His final two overseas tours were in Australia and then Bosnia and Herzegovina, after which he returned to Washington, D.C.

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