I was born in Chicago, the greatest city ever. It must be so, because I’m still here, loving the seasons, cursing the heat, shivering through frigid winters, complaining endlessly about the humidity. But none of it seriously enough to prompt me to pack up and move someplace else.

People often ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, but, honestly, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know, though knowing a thing and voicing it are two different things, and it would be many, many, many years before I actually told someone – out loud — that I wanted to be a writer. It was then many, many, many more years before I actually wrote anything good. I am an overnight success twenty-some years in the making.

Growing up, I read everything I could get my hands on, but the progression toward a life of fictional crime went something like this – Dr. Seuss to Amelia Bedelia, Amelia to Harriet the Spy, Harriet to Agatha Christie and Christie to the ’80s and ’90s when a wave of fantabulous female crime writers swooped in bringing the thunder. Grafton, Muller, Maron, Paretsky, Bland, Neely, Wilson Wesley… I knew right away I wanted to be just like them.