Lawrence Block: Manhattan Noir

LAWRENCEBLOCKhas won most of the major mystery awards, and has been called the quintessential New York writer, although he insists the city’s far too big to have a quintessential writer. His series characters-Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller-all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they wouldn’t really be happy anywhere else.

THOMASH. COOKis the author of twenty novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four separate categories.

His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1996. He splits his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.

JEFFERYDEAVER,the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international bestsellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award-nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noire.

JIMFUSILLIis the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City , winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and TribecaBlues. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

ROBERTKNIGHTLYwas an NYPD patrol sergeant in the 1980s and worked at one time or another in every precinct in Manhattan South (below 96th Street, East and West). In the ’90s, he turned to the Dark Side as a Legal Aid Society lawyer in the criminal courts at 100 Centre Street.

JOHNLUTZhas long enjoyed setting suspense novels in his favorite city, New York, one of which was made into the film Single White Female. His latest book is Fear the Night, set in… New York.

LIZMARTÍNEZis an editor and columnist for police and security publications. Her short fiction has appeared in Combat , OrchardPressMysteries.com, Police Officer’s Quarterly , and Cop Tales 2000 . She was born in New York City and is on the faculty at Interboro Institute, a two-year college in Manhattan. For the record, unlike Freddie Prinze, she is Mexican-American.

MAANMEYERS(Annette and Martin Meyers) have written six books and multiple short stories in the Dutchman series of historical mysteries set in New York in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and ninteenth centuries.

MARTINMEYERSgrew up on Madison Street, a couple of blocks from the East River where the Manhattan Bridge hovers-the Lower East Side then, Chinatown now. He currently lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, author Annette Meyers. In 1975, when he was still an actor, he wrote the first book in his Patrick Hardy P.I. series, Kiss and Kill.

S.J. ROZAN, author of Absent Friends and the Edgar Award-winning Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery series, grew up in the Bronx. Having misspent her youth in lower Manhattan, she always wanted to live there, and now she does.

JUSTINSCOTTwas born on West 76th Street between Riverside and West End, grew up in a small town, and came back to Manhattan to write mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional short story in Midtown, the Upper West Side, the Village, and Chelsea. Twice nominated for Edgar Awards, his New York stories include Many Happy Returns, Treasure for Treasure, Normandie Triangle, and Rampage.

C.J. SULLIVANgrew up in the Bronx and is currently a reporter for the New York Post . Along with writing, the loves of his life are his two children, Luisa Marie and Olivia Kathleen Sullivan.

XUXIis the author of six books, including the novel The Unwalled City and Overleaf Hong Kong (stories and essays), and has edited two anthologies of Hong Kong literature.

She teaches at Vermont College’s MFA program, and lives and writes primarily between Manhattan, upstate New York, Hong Kong, and the South Island of New Zealand. For more information, visit www.xuxiwriter.com.