I grew up in New Jersey, a town of 7,000 where a one-room local library introduced me to the world of crime fiction. I’d walk the two blocks home with an armful of Hardy Boys books, then Raymond Chandler, then Ross MacDonald, losing myself in their imaginary worlds of dirty deeds, the folks who did them, and the gumshoes who tracked them down.

After high school, I left Jersey for Virginia, where I spent the next decade. The University of Richmond, amazingly, gave me a degree in English for reading good books and talking about them. After that, I stumbled into a job as a paralegal with a big firm in Richmond where I learned the only way to move up was law school. So, I took the I-64 to Charlottesville and got my law degree at the University of Virginia, making me a Wahoo (or Cavalier, if you put on airs) alum.

All of which led to Los Angeles, where I practiced law for four decades as partner in a Beverly Hills firm, as a litigator and advisor to local businesses. And then the lure of Santa Fe grew too strong, so I’m now settled in among the land of red and green chiles.

For some time now, I’ve been writing crime fiction. The “Selected Stories” page will give you a sampling of my short stories, and the “Home” page has a teaser on TIDEWATER, my debut novel. Since 2021, WIP drafts of TIDEWATER have been nominated for the UCLA Writing Program’s Kirkwood Prize (twice, once a semifinalist) and for its Allegra Johnson Prize. The tagline: When murder calls, you can’t escape your roots.