Michael Pearson recently retired as a Police Inspector in West Midlands Police, and he worked as a policeman in Birmingham and the Black Country. His final years of service were spent working on the National Police Federation. He has long been a keen student of Black Country history. He is editor of The Blackcountryman, the quarterly journal of the Black Country Society, and he manages the Black Country Society's website. He has written many articles on aspects of the Black Country's history, and he is co-author, with David Cox, of Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths Around the Black Country.