Briefcase & Gun: Novel Thoughts on Corporate Crime.

Welcome to the Minefield

Less than two years ago, I released a book with a wild, fictional premise. Nightfall told the story of controversial shootings of black citizens by Minneapolis police, unleashing racial violence. In an outlandish twist, Nightfall posited the existence of groups intentionally inciting and exploiting the violence for their own political and criminal purposes. Farfetched, some …

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I Hate It When That Happens, or The Depopulation of Cabot Cove

Possibly the two unluckiest people in the known universe were the characters played by Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers in a 1980’s television show called Hart to Hart. This insufferably cute couple, an industrialist and his wife, had the misfortune of stumbling onto a murder, extortion attempt, kidnapping, or other crime each and every week …

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Fine Wine and Moldy Cheese – Aging Fictional Characters

I lost my car keys the other day. For many people, that’s a ho-hum, everyday event. For me, it was a traumatic milestone, a really big deal. I never lose my car keys. But these days, as I approach the dawn of my seventh decade, it’s just another in an unwelcome series of “firsts.” Forgetting …

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Too Big to Frighten

From our It’s About Time file: “Justice Department Sets Sights on Wall Street Executives.”  Attorney General Lynch recently instructed federal prosecutors to concentrate more on prosecuting individual executives, rather than just their employers, for financial crimes, and to pressure Wall Street firms to turn over evidence about their employees’ misconduct.  That this new policy should …

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Crossing Over – Writing for an Opposite-Sex Character

Dustin Hoffman’s character in Tootsie remarks that impersonating a woman made him a better man.  I’ve undertaken a similar task that offers the potential for improving my maleness: I write mysteries with a female protagonist.  More than that, I have written my latest books, Downfall and the upcoming Windfall, from a first-person viewpoint, in the …

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The Wall Street Trap – Black Fridays by Michael Sears

As one of the few authors of mysteries set in the business world, I was eager to read the Edgar-nominated Black Fridays, which is set on Wall Street. Author Michael Sears, himself a former Wall Street trading wunderkind, doesn’t disappoint. While Black Fridays does not wow the readers with its mystery plotting, or in its …

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The Thrill of Disability

Disability is anything but “thrilling,” of course, but it poses an interesting opportunity for the writing of thrillers.  There are many types and degrees of disability.  Some people are completely disabled, others less so.  Some have a disability that’s obvious, while the limitations of others are invisible.  The protagonist of my new novel, Downfall, Pen …

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Corporate Thriller: An Oxymoron?

Corporate Thriller–is the term an oxymoron?  I answer that witticism with a resounding, “No.”  Story and characters are the heart of any novel.  But where do they come from?  What environment do they grow out of?  In part, the answer depends on which mystery-thriller sub-genre the novel inhabits.  Cozy mysteries, for example, can be set …

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