Murder At the Foul Line

Sue DeNymme has a rich bloodline of storytellers, embellishers, and exaggerators, including fishermen, pirates, and royalty. She has traveled extensively, studying language and culture, and has earned degrees from several prestigious universities. When she began writing, she immediately won a poetry prize. Now that she has decided to write the tallest possible tales, she chose mystery fiction for her career. In fact, she is in the process of writing a crime novel and ca

Brendan DuBois is the author of seven novels, one of which, Resurrection Day, is pla

Parnell Hall is the author of the critically acclaimed Stanley Hastings series about an inept and cowardly private eye, and the Puzzle Lady novels that involve crossword puzzles as clues, voted the Best New Discovery by members of the Mystery Guild. He has been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.

Laurie R. King writes stand-alone thrillers, a series about San Francisco homicide inspector Kate Martinelli and, most notably, a series about Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mary Russell. Her first novel, A Grave Talent, won the Edgar and the John Creasey Awards from the (British) Crime Writers’ Association. With Child was nominated for an Edgar.

Mike Lupica is one of the best-known and most accomplished sportswriters in America, a regular on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, as well as the author of fifteen books of fiction, non-fiction, juvenile and mystery fiction. His first mystery, Dead Air, was nominated for an Edgar and was later filmed for CBS as Money, Power and Murder. His most recent novel, Too Far, was a national best-seller.

Michael Malone has written three mysteries, Uncivil Seasons, Time’s Witness, and First Lady, as well as several mainstream novels, notably such modern classics as Dingley Falls , Handling Sin, and Foolscap. He was the head writer for various daytime drama series, including One Life to Live. His short story “Red Clay” won the Edgar and was selected for Best American Mystery Stories of the Century.

Joan H. Parker is the coauthor, with her husband, Robert B. Parker, of Three Weeks in Spring, the moving story of her battle with cancer, and A Year at the Races, a pictorial journal of their adventures with horse racing. She and her husband also collaborated on several scripts for Spenser, the television series based on the Boston P.I.

Robert B. Parker, acclaimed as the contemporary private eye writer in the pantheon of Hammett, Chandler, and Ross Macdonald, won an Edgar for Promised Land, the fourth in the series of instant classics involving Spenser, the tough, wisecracking Boston P.I. who was the basis for a network television series in the 1990s. Parker was recently named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

George Pelecanos, one of the most critically acclaimed crime writers in America, is the author of a dozen novels with several different series characters, most notably Nick Stefanos and the team of Derek Strange and Terry Qui

R. D. Rosen has written for Saturday Night Live and several CBS news shows, but he claims that his novels about Harvey Blissberg, a professional baseball player turned private eye, are closest to his heart. His first book, Strike Three, You’re Dead, won the Edgar in 1984 and was recently named “one of the hundred favorite mysteries of the century” by the Independent Booksellers Association.

S. J. Rozan is one of the most honored mystery writers of recent years, wi

Justin Scott is the author of more than twenty novels, including such huge international best-sellers as The Shipkiller, The Widow of Desire, and A Pride of Royals. His humorous mystery Many Happy Returns was nominated for an Edgar in 1974. His most recent series of novels, recounting the adventures of Benjamin Abbott, a real estate agent in the charming Co

Stephen Solomita has received an extraordinary amount of critical acclaim, being compared to Elmore Leonard and Tom Wolfe (by the New York Times), to Joseph Wambaugh and William J. Caunitz (by the Associated Press), and to John Grisham (Kirkus Reviews). He is the author of nearly twenty books under his own name, many about Stanley Moodrow, a tough New York City cop, and under the pseudonym David Cray.

So let the games begin. Oh, one more thing. While it is generally accepted that James Naismith invented the game of basketball in 1891 by cutting out the bottom of a peach basket and nailing it to a wall, in fact a very similar game had been played hundreds of years earlier. The object was to put a rubber ball through a ring. The stakes were pretty high, as it was possible that the captain of the losing team would be beheaded. Maybe we shouldn’t let this become common knowledge. Some of the thugs in the NBA might think it’s a good idea to reinstate the custom.

– Otto PenzlerJanuary 2005, New York

KELLER’S DOUBLE DRIBBLE by Lawrence Block

Keller, his hands in his pockets, watched a dark-ski

There was no net, just a bare hoop. The playground was at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Third Street, in Greenwich Village, and Keller was one of a handful of spectators standing outside the high chain-link fence, watching idly as ten men, half wearing T-shirts, half bare-chested, played a fiercely competitive game of half-court basketball.

If this were a game at the Garden, the last play would have sent someone to the free-throw line. But there was no ref here to call fouls, and order was maintained in a simpler fashion: Anyone who fouled too frequently was thrown out of the game. It was, Keller felt, an interesting libertarian solution, and he thought it might be worth a try outside the basketball court, but had a feeling it would be tough to make it work.

Keller watched a few more plays, feeling his spirits sink as he did, yet finding it oddly difficult to tear himself away. He’d had a tooth drilled and filled a few blocks away, by a dentist who had himself played varsity basketball years ago at the University of Kentucky, and had been walking around waiting for the Novocain to wear off so he could grab some lunch, and the basketball game had caught his eye, and here he was. Watching, and being brought down in the process, because basketball always depressed him.