Book Giveaway: Win a copy of The Cleveland Creep. Leave a comment stating why you'd like to read Les Roberts' latest mystery. Winner (s) will be announced 5/30/11 on this post. Be sure and leave your email address.
5/30/11!! WINNERS: JAN LONG & DAVID BLOUNT !!!
Les Roberts is the author of 15 mystery novels featuring Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich, as well as 9 other books of fiction. The past president of both the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writer’s League, he came to mystery writing after a 24-year career in Hollywood. He has been a professional actor, a singer, a jazz musician, and a teacher. In 2003 he received the Sherwood Anderson Literary Award. A native of Chicago, he now lives in Northeast Ohio and is a film and literary critic. Roberts’s newest book, The Cleveland Creep is published by Gray & Company. Roberts can be reached at www.LesRoberts.com
LES ROBERTS:
When I created Milan in 1987, I made him not quite 40 and a Vietnam vet, divorced, with two boys aged 12 and 7---never dreaming that here I'd be, twenty five years later, still writing about him. Unlike Raymond Chandler telling tales about Philip Marlowe, I began by writing myself into a corner and now I'm stuck with it. I can't avoid the groundwork I laid down in my first effort---so now, yes indeed, Milan has grown older.
Guess what: so have I.
I never took the chances Milan has; I've never been beaten up, shot, or burned with a cigarette, and no one has ever pointed a loaded gun at me. I don't smoke, I don't guzzle Stroh's, and I can't remember the last time I ate a klobasa sandwich for dinner. But yes, I ache when I crawl out of bed in the morning, and you bet your life I can no longer imbibe alcohol like I used to, nor drink an entire pot and a half of coffee every day nor enjoy red meat and potatoes three times a week as in the old days. I don't own Milan's medical problems, but I have plenty of my own; I'm now on a first-name basis with half the people who work at the Cleveland Clinic.
Yet I love my life; I have plenty of excitement and fun and stress like everyone else and will continue until I can no longer sit up straight at a computer. So Milan, who now has life a bit easier because I've supplied him with a young, tough assistant, is enjoying his own life as it moves exorably from one period to another.
Isn't that what we're all doing?
