A Killing Gift

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For six years I had the honor of serving as a Public Member of the Middle States Commission for Higher Education. In that capacity, I worked with many university provosts, professors, deans, and presidents. It was a remarkably collegial group, and as is often the case in my not-for-profit work, I was the only novelist at the table. For years, my colleagues entreated me to write a novel about them and their fund-raising dilemmas-but Dear God, please not anything specific or identifiable about their particular school.

A Killing Gift is for them and for the wonderful supervisors and Glass fellows from Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute, CUNY Graduate Center, NYU Schools of Law and Social Work, the New School, Adelphi, Derner Institute, Boston University, Emory, and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and for others who have been grant recipients over the years of the Glass Foundation. In every case, we at the Foundation always receive far more from our research projects, our students, and their professors than we are able to give to them.

At NAL, thanks to Kara Welsh, Claire Zion, my wonderful editor Audrey LaFehr, and all the good people in publicity and production, and on the sales force who work on and sell my books. And to the art director for the great covers.

And thanks to my children, Alex and Lindsey, to Judy Zilm and Dorothy Harris, and to my friends in the New York City Police Department and the Police Foundation, who give me so much inspiration every day. And last but not least, the York U of my story and its people bears no resemblance to any university or university personnel I ever met. This is fiction.