Vick Mickunas

Philip Kerr wrote his first Bernie Gunther novels back in the 1980's. He wrote several then he shelved the project and went on to other things.

Kerr's Bernie Gunther character is a Berlin cop in the 1930's. He was a homicide detective when Adolph Hitler's National Socialists came to power.Suddenly, there were a lot more homicides to investigate.

Jimmy Breslin has written a biography of Branch Rickey. Rickey was the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club. He is the man who brought the first black ball player into the major leagues. That man was Jackie Robinson.

This is the story of how Rickey made that fateful decision to break what was then known as the color line in baseball. It was a decision that changed America forever.

Kate Atkinson writes some complex literary fiction. Her latest novel "Started Early, Took My Dog" derives it's title from a poem by Emily Dickinson. This is her 4th novel featuring private investigator (now retired) Jackson Brodie.

Each book is this series has been utterly different. In the previous one, "When Will There Be Good News?" Brodie spent much of the book in a coma after being involved in a train wreck. He barely existed in that one.

Jacqueline Winspear discusses the development of a most unusual detective series that features the private investigator Maisie Dobbs. In this interview the author describes her initial moment of inspiration when she
imagined Maisie dressed in period costume inside the London subway, circa 1929. That vision evolved into the opening chapter of her first Maisie Dobbs book.

Ian Rankin is one of the most popular mystery writers in the United Kingdom. For twenty years he wrote a series of detective novels featuring John Rebus, a cantankerous deputy inspector with the Edinburgh (Scotland) Police.

That series was written in chronological order so that when Rebus reached the mandatory retirement age Rankin simply ended it. That was a few years ago.