Immigration, Integration, and Imagination
A reader of Lethal Fetish and the other Riley mysteries asked me why I chose one of this Irishman’s haunts to be a Polish bakery—and how...
The Original Femme Fatale
The term femme fatale, used to describe a dangerous and alluring woman, originated in the mid-1800s and became a staple of noir mysteries...
Uncovering Cover Art
The cover art for Lethal Fetish, my upcoming mystery novel in the Riley series features sultry, salacious, even lascivious images. Conor...
1981 = WKRP + 64K RAM + Frogger + Bread Bowls
One of my favorite endeavors in the course of writing is research. I relish digging into maps, photos, magazines, and recordings to...
A Blind Pig and a Million Monkeys
While my stories will not be among the great works of the 21st century, every so often I nail a sentence—or so I like to tell myself as a...
What So Good About “Normal”?
In my mystery writing, I hope for three things. First, I want to draw the reader into a good story through a plot that builds...
What the World Needs Now
There is no doubt that various groups have been terribly oppressed. This history combined with contemporary politics has produced a...
Pestilence Payback
Murder on the Fly, the second installment of the “Riley the Exterminator” mystery series, is available for pre-ordering at...
Longing to Belong
In Poisoned Justice, I used a murder mystery to walk the line between vengeance and justice—a most difficult philosophical problem. One...
Hard-boiled or Soft-hearted?
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, you might not be associating romantic love with crime noir. A reader of POISONED JUSTICE wrote...
