The Lock Artist

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Dave McOmie, real-life safecracker extraordinaire, for all the assistance with the safecracking material-we got it right enough to be convincing, but wrong enough to make sure this book isn’t a training manual. Thanks also to the aptly named Jim Locke for getting me started with locks in the first place, to Debbie Noll for the help with the American Sign Language, and to George Griffin for the help with the motorcycles.

Thanks to Bill Massey and Peter Joseph for working extra hard with me on this one. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

Thanks as always to Bill Keller and Frank Hayes, to Jane Chelius, to everyone at St. Martin’s Press and Orion UK, Maggie Griffin, Nick Childs, Elizabeth Cosin, Bob Randisi and the Private Eye Writers of America, Bob Kozak and everyone else at IBM, Jeff Allen, and Rob Brenner.

To the good people of both Milford and River Rouge, Michigan, I’d like to say that the portrayal of both places in this book is based on memories so imperfect they might as well be from a fever dream. I know this is worlds away from real life.

For some great insight into how traumatic events affect the human mind, I recommend The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, by Donald Kalsched (Brunner-Routledge, 1996).

Finally, more than ever, I owe everything to Julia, who really had to help me get through this one, to Nicholas, who will be driving away in a car soon, and to Antonia, who is very glad I took out the octopus.