COMMUNITY CHEST by Rob Lopresti So once again Bouchercon time has rolled around and I will not be in attendance. To tell the truth, I usually am not, because I am the worst traveler outside of a coral reef. And frankly, I am not the most social of animals. Hanging around a noisy bar for […]

MY MUCH-PUBLISHED FRIEND by Rob Lopresti You might say I was cleaning out my files at Criminal Brief Headquarters when I found this scrap. The important thing to remember is that neither of the characters represent any real people. It is just a meditation on the writing life. My much-published friend has a complaint. His […]

OF NITS AND THE PICKING THEREOF THERE IS NO END by Rob Lopresti I picked up the newspaper today (and yes, I still read the acoustic version, rather than the electric one) and saw something rather odd. The article was about the investigation of a woman’s disappearance and the police search of a home owned […]

SEPARATED AT BIRTH II by Rob Lopresti We did this back in April, but it ain’t a summer rerun, because all the questions are brand spanking new. Each pair of actors played the same character, well-known in mystery fiction. The questions get harder as you go down the page. Answers are at the bottom. Have […]

AN HOUR IN PURGATORY by Rob Lopresti Ladies and gentlemen, we may see a world record set here today. Mr. Lopresti is attempting to squeeze a fourth weekly blog entry out of a single week of vacation. The smart money says it can’t be done. The dumb money has already been spent on lottery tickets. […]

WORKING VACATION by Rob Lopresti So we went on a week’s vacation and, as I wrote here, my plan was to spend as much time as possible writing. I have a full-time job and I am a slow writer, so this was a precious opportunity to get some time in on what Rex Stout once […]

PT CRUISING by Rob Lopresti I’m back from our vacation in Port Townsend, a Victorian seaport on the Olympic Peninsula. (I think there must be an obscure Washington state law requiring the town to be described as a Victorian seaport. . . . Nobody ever calls it a nineteenth-century harbor town, for instance.) The town’s […]