I had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

I live and die with the Chicago Cubs

The possibility of bringing white-collar criminals to justice is ever receding over the horizon.

Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.

I went to college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in political science.

No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship