THE INSTANT ENEMY by Ross Macdonald When I first decided to become a film producer in 1974, I called Ken Millar (Ross Macdonald) and asked him if he’d write a screenplay for me based on one of his books. He’d never worked on a film before. We chose The Instant...
SISTER LOVERS by Big Star: Really, this album never gets old. I CAN HEAR THE HEART BEATING AS ONE by Yo La Tengo : I appreciate Yo La Tengo more all the time. More than I did a decade ago. LEONARD COHEN by Leonard Cohen: This is not an unusual favorite. I'm guessing a...
I cannot imagine writing a novel that doesn’t have music mentioned in it. My debut mystery, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD, also mentions the theme song for the Cops TV show, but that probably doesn’t count. I include music in my novels to not only set a mood, but, also,...
Hey, it’s not by accident that Mitch Berger, one of the heroes of my Berger-Mitry series, is a film critic. I spent immense chunks of my childhood sitting in the dark watching old movies on television exactly like Mitch did. “Everything I know in life I learned from...
THE STAND by Stephen King I first read The Stand in junior high, after it was re-released in its extended, uncut form. This book is like a master class in creating interesting characters, and experiencing a story through their various points of view. If we say a...
ECHOES IN THE DARKNESS by Joseph Wambaugh. This story of a looking-for-love schoolteacher who falls for a co-worker with the gift of gab and little else was one of my first introductions to what true crime could be: fascinating, twisty, sad, tedious, sometime...
