Inter Lake publishes book of law roundup reporting

The Daily Inter Lake has just released a new book — “Only in Montana: Tiny True Tales of Mischief, Mayhem and Mirth.”

It’s a collection of incidents taken from the popular Law Enforcement Roundup.

“One of the best-read sections of the newspaper is now going to be available in a kind of collector’s edition,” Managing Editor Frank Miele said.

Miele selected some of the very best stories from the last 10 years and put them together for longtime readers and new fans. Most of these true tales will happen “Only in Montana” — and can be read only in the Daily Inter Lake. 

“We’ve been blessed with a combination of talented crime reporters, dumb criminals and imaginative citizens for longer than I can remember,” Miele said. “That’s a perfect combination for fun reading.”

Most of the stories are only a paragraph long, proving once again that brevity is the soul of wit. It also makes for a quick read, and a book that can be gobbled up all at once or in little bites.

Miele pointed out that crime reporting has been a key element of the Inter Lake’s success as the longest-running newspaper in Northwest Montana. Founded as the weekly Inter Lake in 1889 in the boom town of Demersville, the Inter Lake moved to nearby Kalispell in 1891 when the boom went bust.

In both locations, crime was a major component of news coverage in the 19th century, as readers wanted to be kept up to date on who was arrested, who was on the lam, and of course who was murdered. That was frontier Montana, one of the last outposts of the Wild West, but our readers never lost their love for tales of mischief, mayhem and mirth — and there are plenty of those every day in the Inter Lake’s law roundup.

To order your copy, call 406-755-7000 or stop by the Daily Inter Lake at 727 E. Idaho St. in Kalispell. The paperback book sells for $9.95.