Murder For Love

– O. P.

ed mcbain

The story that follows is true. Well, not exactly, but the events described did take place, and the characters are based on real-life people. The time and the places described are real, too, and you'll recognize them from the gangster movies and television programs you've seen over the years.

A period piece is not the story one would have expected from Ed McBain, who is best known for his landmark series about the 87th Precinct, and in more recent years for the bestselling Matthew Hope novels.

But, under his real name of Evan Hunter, the author has a wide range of books to his credit, including The Blackboard Jungle, written when he was only twenty-eight, Love, Dad, a variety of science fiction novels, children's books, Lizzie, a superb fictional account of the Lizzie Borden murder case, and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

What you didn't know is that this hugely versatile and popular writer started his professional life as a jazz musician who dreamed of a different career-he wanted to be a painter. When one is born with talent, it simply finds a way to manifest itself. Evan Hunter was born with more talent than any one person deserves!

– O. P.

joyce carol oates

Customarily, the well-known writers of an era achieve their stardom, if you will, by one of two means. One is to be prolific and popular with readers, the other is to create a distinctive prose style that is applauded by critics. It is very rare indeed to be able to satisjy the demands of reviewers and literary aesthetes, who mainly seem to want authors to fail, as well as a large number of readers, who mainly want to be entertained.

Joyce Carol Oates, of course, is one of those rare hybrids whose work is eagerly sought by discerning readers, yet who receive glowing reviews from the most sharp-clawed critics. The great astonishment is that she writes so much so brilliantly, with hundreds of short stories tucked among dozens of novels, with some nonfic-tion on the side to round out the collection.

Ranging from the clear beauty o/ Belle-Fleur to the Gothic intensity o/ The Mysteries of Winterthorn to the psychological suspense novels she writes under the pseudonym Rosamunde Smith, Joyce Carol Oates brings to an extraordinary spectrum of work both originality and professionalism. When you have finished reading "At the Paradise Motel, Sparks, Nevada, " for example, try to forget it. You will fail.

– O. P.

sara paretsky

Whether it's wanted or not, or whether it's fair, or appropriate, or pleasing to the subjects, some authors cannot be mentioned without another coming to mind. Ham-mett and Chandler. Sayers and Christie. Paretsky and Grafton.

One of those odd confluences of timing and circumstance brought two books to the world in the same year-1982: Indemnity Only and "A" Is for Alibi. Only those few years ago, now seemingly another lifetime, and the strong, independent, female private eye awakened half the readers in America to want books about V. I. Warshawski and Kinsey Milhone and their literary progeny (and the other half to write them, it seems).

Yes, Marcia Muller created Sharon McCone nearly a decade earlier, and P. D. James demonstrated that Cordelia Gray was the equal (or more) of any male gumshoe, but it was the combination of Grafton and Paretsky that catapulted the female detective into the most popular and widely read character of the 1980s, an appetite that has not diminished to the present day.

This is not a V. I. Warshawski story, but one that reveals a hitherto unknown talent on the part of the much acclaimed mystery writer: had she set her sights in a different direction, she could have been a highly successful writer of Harlequin Romances. (This, in case you didn't get it, is a joke.)

– O. P.

a

It is the last decade of the twentieth century, and the sensations associated with love have changed little over the ages. However, the conventions of love-its ma