New York City, New York

"Welcome to New York, it's a city full of fun! They got plenty of rats and roaches, enough welfare for everyone...." (Leon Thomas, Facets)

I grew up in New York State, on Long Island, and from childhood on spent lots of time in Manhattan. Memories? The New York World's Fair, dinners at the Tiro a Segno in Greenwich Village, appearances with my friend Stan Rabinowitz on the Jim Gearhart radio show, late afternoons spent in the studio audience for Soupy Sales' television show, visits to the offices of Mad and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Mystery Writers of America cocktail parties at the Hotel Seville and Edgar Allan Poe awards dinners at the Essex House and after-Edgars parties at Mary Higgins Clark's lovely penthouse overlooking Central Park, $1 open-air concerts in the park on sultry summer evenings, hours spent gazing into Pavel Tchelitchew's hypnotic "Hide and Seek" at the Museum of Modern Art....

And, later, after moving away, return trips to the Tiro, to the Washington Square apartment that was first my sister Laura's and then my brother Richard's, to the 1988 International Crime Writers Congress and the Museum of Natural History with a Becca young enough to be thrilled by the dinosaurs, to a CMA conference at the Marriott Marquis on Times Square and two SURTEX conferences with then-girlfriend Michelle Rimpf at the Javitts Center.

I went through a stretch of some years when I hated New York, but recently I've made my peace with the city, the first city I ever explored on my own, a truly toddlin' town.

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