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I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

I've always loved mysteries, the something there that you didn't know, and with 'Case Histories' I just decide to make that more up-front.

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.

I just have mysteries in all my books, I think, whether it's a boy investigating or a girl. I have an enduring fascination with mysteries of all kinds.

I'm unique for a suspense author in that I don't have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn't even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons - I just had to be willing to make the phone calls.

After I had written seventeen full-length mysteries, two volumes of mini-mysteries, a travel guide and some quiz books, not to mention a spin-off Roman Mystery Scrolls series, I thought it was time I moved to new historical pastures.

Mysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.