Murder in Vegas

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JAMES SWAIN is a native of New York, and went to college at New York University, where he studied with Ralph Ellison and Anatole Broyard. His first job out of college was as a magazine editor. Swain moved to Florida in 1982. For the next twenty years, he ran a successful advertising business. During that time, he continued to write, and published three books of nonfiction about magic, as well as a novel. In 2001, Swain began publishing a series of books about retired policeman Tony Valentine, who captures people who cheat casinos. Swain is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on casino scams and swindles.

S.J. ROZAN is the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the standalone Absent Friends. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero awards for Best Novel and the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. She is a former Mystery Writers of America National Board member, a current Sisters in Crime National Board member, and President of the Private Eye Writers of America. She lives in lower Manhattan.

The New York Times found the work of Edgar Award-winning author WENDY HORNSBY to be “refreshing, real, and raunchy.” Published internationally, and in many languages, she has written seven mystery novels and a collection of short stories, Nine Sons and Other Mysteries. A native of the western United States, she holds graduate degrees in Ancient and Medieval History and is a professor of history at Long Beach City College.

MICHAEL COLLINS writes the Dan Fortune detective series that began in 1967 with Act of Fear. The most recent Fortune book is Fortune’s World, published by Crippen & Landru, 2000. A collection of non-Fortune stories, Spies and Thieves, Cops and killers, Etc., was published in 2002 by Five Star Publishing.His awards include an MWA Edgar and two other nominations; three Shamus nominations; the PWA Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement Award from MWA SoCal. He has published another twenty-four detective novels under the pen names Mark Sadler, John Crowe, William Arden, and Carl Dekker, and three nonmystery novels under his real name: Dennis Lynds.

Currently living in London, T. P. KEATING has found that the glitz of Vegas is visible the world over. If only the Vegas weather could be exported too! This story is dedicated to his wife, Marielle. She is his sympathetic reader and sole authority on what constitutes a killer pair of heels.

J. MADISON DAVIS has published seven novels, six nonfiction books, and over thirty short stories. He has been nominated for the Best First Novel Edgar and twice for the Best Novel Oklahoma Book award. He is a former president of IACW North America, and a professor of professional writing at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. His latest novel, Dead Line, is an original Law and Order story. His novel The Van Gogh Conspiracy is scheduled for publication in the summer of 2005.

SUE PIKE lives and writes in Ottawa, Canada. Her stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Storyteller, and several collections of short crime fiction, including Cold Blood V, Bloody Words, and all five Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies. She is the coeditor of Bone Dance, a collection of musical mysteries published by RendezVous Press, 2003. “Widow’s Weeds” from Cottage Country Killers won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of 1997.

JOAN RICHTER, a former New Yorker who now lives in Washington, D.C., got her start in mystery fiction in a creative writing class taught by Ellery Queen’s legendary first editor, Frederic Dannay. She spent two years in Kenya with the Peace Corps, was a stringer for the New York Times metropolitan section, and worked for American Express, where she was a delegate to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa,and continues to explore the world. Her fiction often draws upon her experiences with foreign cultures.

LIBBY FISCHER HELLMANN writes the Chicago-based series featuring video producer and single mom Ellie Foreman. An Eye for Murder debuted in 2002 and was nominated for an Anthony Award. A Picture of Guilt was released in 2003; An Image of Death in 2004. All three were simultaneously published by Poisoned Pen Press (in hardcover) and Berkley Prime Crime (mass market). Her short stories have appeared in American and British magazines. When not writing fiction, Libby produces industrial videos and trains individuals to be better speakers. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family and a beagle, shamelessly named Shiloh.

TOM SAVAGE is the author of four bestselling suspense novels: Precipice, Valentine, The Inheritance, and Scavenger. Valentine was filmed by Warner Bros., and the others have been optioned for filming. He has served on the National Board of Mystery Writers of America, and he is a member of IACW. Raised in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, he now lives in New York City, where he works at Murder Ink, the world’s oldest mystery bookstore. “Rolling the Bones” is his second published short story: the first, “One of Us,” is in the MWA anthology, Blood on Their Hands, edited by Lawrence Block.

EDWARD WELLEN is a man of many talents who has had fiction published in almost every genre imaginable. His short stories have appeared in Universe, Imagination, Infinity, and numerous other science fiction and mystery magazines starting in the 1950s. His best known work, the comic “Galactic Origins” series, was a highlight in Galaxy, which between 1952 and 1962 published all nine of his pseudofactual examinations of the roots of future law, etiquette, medicine, philosophy, and other social doctrines. He is also no stranger to crime and mystery stories, having appeared in anthologies such as The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sci-Fi Private Eye, and Murder Is My Business. He is also the author of Hijack, a satirical novel of organized crime and space travel. Recently his short mystery fiction was collected in the anthology Perps.

K.j.a. WISHNIA broke into publishing when his self-published novel, 23 Shades of Black, was nominated for the Edgar and the Anthony Awards. He has written four other novels featuring Ecuadorian-American female sleuth, Filomena Buscarsela, including Red House, which was a Washington Post Book World “Rave” Book of the Year in 2002, and Blood Lake, the latest entry in what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called “one of the most distinctive series in mystery fiction.” By day, he is an English professor, teaching writing and a notoriously amusing crime fiction course at Suffolk Community College on Long Island.

LINDA KERSLAKE is from the Northwest, where she manages a medical practice and moonlights as office help at the local police department. Her short stories have appeared in Mystery Times and Death Dance, another IACW anthology edited by Trevanian. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the International Association of Crime Writers. She has finished her first novel and continues to write short stories.

JOHN WESSEL is the author of the Harding series-This Far, No Further; Pretty Ballerina; Kiss It Goodbye. He lives outside Chicago.

LISE McCLENDON is the author of two mystery series, the Alix Thorssen series (Blue Wolf, etc.) set in Jackson Hole, and the Dorie Lennox series (Sweet and Lowdown) set in WW2-era Kansas City. She lives in Billings, Montana, with her family. She is a former board member of International Association of Crime Writers and currently on the national board of Mystery Writers of America.

RONNIE KLASKIN has had a number of stories published, some in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Whittle Communications, Special Report, among others, the most recent of which was in the anthology, A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffrey Deaver. She has won prizes for her short stories and poems. She has a MFA in fiction writing from Vermont College.

RUTH CAVIN was born in the very middle of the terrible 1918 flu epidemic, but recent events find her with Thomas Dunne Books at St. Martin’s Press for the past sixteen years. While she has published many mystery novels under the company’s Minotaur imprint, her output surprises some agents by being quite a bit more varied. Before taking her first editorial nine-to-five job, she was the author of several published books-none of them mysteries, all of them now long out of print. She lives in a suburb of New York and commutes daily to St. Martin’s offices in Manhattan’s historic Flatiron Building.

Brooklyn-born A. B. “ROBBIE” ROBBINS joined the Marines at seventeen, where he started on the road to his black belt in judo and brown belt in karate. He became a professional ballroom dancer at the age of twenty-one. During his career he garnered a national championship and status as a master performer, coach, and choreographer. Robbie is an outstanding chef and has written a cookbook, The Convenience Market Gourmet. Other writing credits include a feature-length screenplay, religious lyrics set to classical music, and a short story published in Magnolias and Mayhem. He is at work on a mystery novel called Dancing in the Darkness, plus a short story collection based on the character in this anthology. He plays classical and flamenco guitar, has owned a nightclub/restaurant in the New Orleans area, a judo/karate dojo in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and health clubs in California, Washington, and Texas. He loves sailing, and his idol is Leonardo da Vinci.

DR. GAY TOLTL KINMAN has eight award nominations for her mysteries. She was the 2003 Edgars Chair for Best Children’s Mystery, and a presenter of the award; is a scholar for the Center for the Book, Library of Congress/UCLA “Women of Mystery” Program; and coordinates Workshops for Writers at Cal State, San Bernardino. She has published over one hundred and fifty articles and several mystery short stories; had a play produced; coedited a cookbook, Desserticide II: AKA Just Desserts and Deathly Advice; and has a recipe in A Second Helping of Murder. Anthology mysteries include “Miss Parker and the Cutter Sanborn Tables” in A Deadly Dozen: Tales of Murder from Los Angeles (Agatha nominee) and “Neither Tarnished nor Afraid” in Murder on Sunset Boulevard. Her gothic novel, Castle Reiner, is set in California in 1899. Five children’s mysteries featuring Alison Leigh Powers, Super Sleuth, were published by Amber Quill Press.

Sharing initials with Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Marilyn Monroe, Mitch Miller, and flying candy disks, MICKI MARZ writes stories beneath a two-hundred-year-old, moss-feathered oak tree in southeastern Louisiana. Micki, published under two other names, says trying on new identities suits a felonious mind. When not writing or teaching the occasional writing class, Micki edits abstruse technical documents about how to blow up things and clean up afterward. Fiction work in progress is a tale featuring a child runaway during Depression times, with, of course, a mystery attached to his exploits.

RICK MOFINA’S suspense novel, Blood of Others, the 2003 Arthur Ellis Award Winner for Best Novel, is a book from his acclaimed crime fiction series featuring reporter Tom Reed and detective Walt Sydowski. Series titles include If Angels Fall, Cold Fear, No Way Back, and Be Mine. Mofina is a former journalist who has reported from the Persian Gulf, Africa, and the Caribbean. His true-crime articles have appeared in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, and Penthouse. Please visit him at www.rickmofina.com.

JEREMIAH HEALY is a graduate of Rutgers College and Harvard Law School. He is the creator of two mystery series, the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator novels under his own name, and the Mairead O’Clare legal-thriller novels under his pseudonym of Terry Devane. The most recent O’Clare novel, A Stain upon the Robe, deals with the Boston priest/rape scandal, and it was recently optioned for feature film. A past president of the Private Eye Writers of America, Jerry just finished a four-year term as president of the International Association of Crime Writers, a thousand-member organization with branches in twenty-two countries spread over four continents.