Essays
Shane’s Lot: How a 1949 Gun-Toting Loner Still Rides Through American Literature
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A stranger comes to town. He is stern, quiet, with a whiff of criminality, seductive to women and men alike, his life like an arrow shooting him onward. He…
Exploring the Isolation of the British Countryside
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There is a magnificent bit in a Sherlock Holmes story, which—subconsciously in the beginning, I guess – gave me the inspiration for my first detective novel, Death Under a…
How An Obsession With Art Crime Became a Thriller
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If you have ever wanted to know how it feels to snatch a painting from a museum wall, slide it under your shirt, and take off, then Michael Finkel’s,…
Passionate Distortions: Patricia Highsmith and the Female Protagonist
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What is it about the work of Patricia Highsmith that attracts some readers as powerfully as it repels others? I’m in the first group: I fell under the spell…
How an Epic History of the Mafia Came out of a Chance Meeting with a Literary Legend
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My last book about the mafia, Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman, was an international bestseller translated into 20 languages. Because of the book’s global…
Was ‘The Leopard Man’ Hollywood’s First Slasher Film?
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Cornell Woolrich published Black Alibi in 1942. His tenth book overall, it was the third in his series of “Black” novels. The Bride Wore Black (1940), later adapted into…
Running Away with the Fairies
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Here in Avalon was never supposed to be about fairies. I’d envisioned the novel—a literary thriller about two sisters, one of whom, Cecilia, goes missing after getting involved with…
Cozy Mystery Subgenres: Making the Perfect Blend
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Cozy mystery is a subgenre of crime fiction. When readers ask what are cozy mysteries, I explain they’re mysteries without on-the-page violence, physical intimacy or naughty words. That’s the…