To Mike

I’ve been slow to write about the death of my dear friend Michael F. Whelan last week. He was known to many as “Wiggins,” the head of the Baker Street Irregulars, and in that capacity, he was a giant. Ernie Banks, perhaps the greatest of the Chicago Cubs ballplayers, said, “The measure of a man…

Read More

“There were giants in the earth in those days…”

John LeCarré has died, at the age of 89. I read his work voraciously, beginning in my early years of discovery of mysteries and thrillers, and continuing until now. It is beyond me to write a proper appreciation of his contributions to the genre, but for me, what set his writing apart from the dozens,…

Read More

Some Conversations about Books

While the pandemic has kept me from seeing friends in person, I’ve done a series of recorded conversations on a variety of topics. I thought I’d post them all here: For the Pasadena-based Literary Alliance and Altadena Public Library, I created a series of conversations for their “Open Book on Location” venue with an assortment…

Read More

The Elephant in the Room

On the ninetieth anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the Black Lives Matter movement sweeps across America like an East wind, it seems like a good time to address the question: Was Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson racist? Should Holmes’s statue be taken down from public places? It is undeniable that…

Read More

Neil and Les Talking!

I’m very pleased to share my conversation with Neil Gaiman about “Annotated American Gods,” writing, and the Coronavirus: Neil Gaiman and Leslie Klinger in Conversation You can read all about the new book here: Annotated American Gods The gods will be with us, I’m certain!

Read More

My writing year in review

Having seen a friend do this, I thought that I’d take a look back at my writing activities in 2019. Despite family health issues and California wildfires, I got a few things done. Ghost Stories, an anthology I edited with my pal Lisa Morton, came out from Pegasus Books in January, as well as the…

Read More

Library of Congress Crime Classics!

For more than a year, I’ve only been able to hint at a very exciting project: the Library of Congress Crime Classics series! You may know that my dear friends Rob Rosenwald and Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press have been publishing the British Library Crime Classics series here in the U.S. They conceived the…

Read More

American Gods

I’m honored that for more than 15 years, I have called Neil Gaiman my friend. Not only is Neil probably the greatest living author of dark fantasy, in my modest opinion, he is one of the most generous and supportive and warm and loyal people on earth. Practically since the day his amazing novel American…

Read More

Beginning Again

I began work on Project X on Saturday, the annotation of a major fantasy novel. I can’t reveal the title yet because the contract is not yet signed. For the last month or so, I’ve been twitchy without a project to work on, so I first spent a few hours, kludging together an electronic text…

Read More