AND IN OTHER NEWS, BATMAN MUGGED A NUN by Rob Lopresti It has not been a great week for the forces of law and order, has it? One story after another has suggested we can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard, or at least an unsealed indictment. Here are the […]

LISTENING TO THE SHANTY DRUMMER by Rob Lopresti Back in 1983 I was taking evening courses at the Newark campus of Rutgers the State University of New Jersey (and yes, that was the school’s official name … imagine singing the football fight song). So two nights a week I would drive through bombed-out-looking neighborhoods in […]

THIS IS A NO TRANSCENDING ZONE by Robert Lopresti I read a book review today and jacked up my blood pressure by about ten points. It was a favorable review of a mystery novel and things seemed to be going along merrily enough until the critic threw out what he must have thought was the […]

STARK CONTRASTS by Rob Lopresti If a book is written in third person, who is the narrator? Nobody? Or is it supposed to be the author? I tend to think it is intended to be no one, an empty neutral personality. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t they all sound more or less the same? […]

THE WAY WE NOIR by Rob Lopresti Yesterday in this space Curt Colbert wrote about being the editor of Seattle Noir. I was one of the lucky writers he got to edit. Noir is often defined as “Life’s a bitch and then you die,” but I think that’s only half of the formula. The true […]

THE BAG MAN by Rob Lopresti Look over there. No, not yet. Okay, now. See that guy? See what he’s carrying? Yeah, a plastic bag, the kind with a sealing top. But he doesn’t have his lunch in it. It’s a magazine. Why is he carrying a magazine around in a sealable plastic bag? Maybe […]

STEALING FROM THE BRITS by Rob Lopresti I have a story in the latest (July/August) issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Well, it’s more of an anecdote. “Shanks on Misdirection” is very short, especially compared to my last appearance there, which was a novelette. But what I want to discuss is that I stole the […]