All of this, of course, suggests that it’s taken an awfully long time to find out what I know how to do. However, the broad, if not deep, approach to a career isn't totally without redeeming value. Along the way, I’ve met, worked with, and enjoyed the company of people from all walks of life — from fellow ditch diggers and factory workers to politicians and corporate royalty.

After a while, I came to understand that most people, however the public views their status, do what they have to do to get through life; that in the best of us, there’s some bad, and in the worst of us, there’s some good. Hitler loved dogs. And I suspect we could find a little dirt on Mother Theresa if we looked hard enough. Given a specific set of circumstances, any of us could fall victim to greed or jealousy or revenge. Any of us could commit a serious crime, including murder. Ordinary people can find themselves caught up in extraordinary events and find themselves saints or sinners, villains or heroes. That’s what I try to write about.

In the mid-eighties — I was 40 by then — I decided to enter the St. Martin’s Press First Private Eye novel competition. I picked a 69-year-old former Army intelligence sergeant turned private eye as my main character. I thought that having an old detective was original. It wasn't. I thought that not setting the mystery in New York or Los Angeles, but in a smaller city like Indianapolis was original. It wasn’t. There are several older detectives, and the highly respected mystery writer Michael Z. Lewin used an Indianapolis setting before I did. I learned all this after I had committed my misunderstandings to paper. Fortunately, it worked anyway.

My first mystery attempt, The Stone Veil, managed to get the attention of editors at St. Martin’s. And though it didn’t win the competition, after a couple of years languishing on a shelf or drawer, a recently arrived Ruth Cavin wiped off the dust and decided to publish it. I was thrilled. Critics were too for the most part. In a mixed review, The New York Times said “The pragmatic investigator made a good first impression.” Almost all the other reviews were positive. The book went into a second, small printing, and was nominated in 1991 for the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best first novel. I lost to Walter Mosley for his entry Devil in A Blue Dress. Losing to Mosley helped take the sting out of the loss. The fact that I found out I was nominated after the awards were announced might have dulled that particular sting as well, but caused another. I missed the awards ceremony and the chance to meet that year’s other first novel nominees — Jerome Doolittle (Body Scissors) and Janet Dawson (Kindred Crimes), and congratulate the amazingly talented winner.

Under contract with St. Martin 's, three others in the Shanahan series were published — The Steel Web , The Iron Glove , and The Concrete Pillow — all to favorable reviews but modest sales. I also managed to sneak in an out-of-series mystery novel, Eclipse of the Heart , which followed the pattern of genuinely good reviews, but less than bestseller sales.

St. Martin 's took a pass on book five of the Shanahan series, Nickel-Plated Soul , and the series. I had suffered the fate of many other mid-list mystery writers. We hadn't hit the Best Seller Lists or become brand names, and the situation in publishing had changed. Because huge bookstore chains demanded large quantities of each book — quantities that they could return to the publisher without penalty — mainstream publishers became jittery with their mid-list writers. Big publishers — and they were becoming increasingly large, swallowing up their competitors at a dizzying pace — needed to please the stockholders. Despite a consistent following, I was out on my ear.

I kept writing. I kept submitting various mystery manuscripts. But my sales record preceded me. Rejection letters were almost always flattering, but in the end, the only way I could make it back to the big bookstore bookshelves was to write that “big” book. Mainstream publishers wouldn't take a chance. A decade had gone by before I learned that Otto Penzler was helping Severn House, a London publisher, get a foothold in the American mystery market. I followed up on his recommendation to send Nickel-Plated Soul overseas. Edwin Buckhalter, at Severn House, contacted me almost instantly it seemed, saying the book kept him up all night and he wanted it.

Shanahan emerged from forced retirement at 70. Although ten years had passed, the old detective aged only one year. (If only I could make that work for me.) Nickel-Plated Soul followed in the footsteps of the early books. Good reviews (a starred review from Booklist ) and modest sales. Only this time, a smaller publisher could successfully deal with smaller press runs. Libraries and online bookstores didn't need a hundred-thousand book inventory. The good news is that we are seeing more of this. Independent and genre bookstores carry the work of lesser known, but often highly regarded mystery writers. Today, smaller publishers — Felony & Murder, Soho, Serpent's Tail, Bitter Lemon as examples — are making sure there is some diversity in the marketplace, just as smaller, independent filmmakers and film-loving movie theater owners are making sure smaller films have their day on screen.

With the success of Nickel-Plated Soul, Severn House went on to publish Platinum Canary , Glass Chameleon and most recently Asphalt Moon (released in the US in May 2007).

Unlike many other mystery writers who credit such pioneers as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler for their inspiration, I must confess that my love for detective stories stems not so much from having read them as a child, but from seeing them on the big screen. My older brother and I would take the trolley to downtown Indianapolis on Saturdays and Sundays. We would have lunch at Craig's or Wheeler's, or the Seville if he felt flush with cash, and then take in a double feature. The Indiana Theater, Loews, Lyric, Keiths and the Circle were the grand old downtown theaters. We both loved the theaters and the movies. There were times when we saw two double features in one day.

While I liked all kinds of movies, I began to narrow my focus on westerns and private eyes when television entered our household. Television was a great influence. There were early private eye series in prime time — “Mr. Lucky,” “Peter Gunn,” “Richard Diamond,” and “Have Gun, Will Travel.” Paladin, the “Have Gun” protagonist, was a private eye in the old west, merging two of my favorite genres. Ralph Bellamy had a show in which he would always introduce himself as private eye “Mike Barnett, with two t's.” I loved all of them — not just classics like “Columbo” and the western hero Bret Maverick morphing into private eye Jim Rockford, but also the sloppily produced, but lovable “McMillan & Wife” and the Warner Brothers formulated franchise — “77 Sunset Strip,” “Surfside Six,” “Hawaiian Eye” and “Bourbon Street Beat.” The franchise concept has been successfully revived with “Law & Order” and “CSI” progeny. I like the contemporary crime/police dramas. But there are no real private eyes on network TV, are there?

Because the movies were more of an influence for me than the written word in those days, the Shanahan books may be more cinematic in nature than some. Each has a movie-sized chunk of story, where dialogue not only reveals character, but also drives the plot. One reviewer noted that the Shanahan books were tight — no padding. For me, that's a good thing. I try to keep you up at night.

Though I'm working on novels and screenplays that take place in San Francisco where I live now, I have never regretted choosing Indianapolis as the Shanahan setting. It is, and always will be, the place I know best. All of my early years were in Indianapolis, the “Crossroads of America.” I attended Broad Ripple and Arlington high schools, worked for Merchants Bank, Melvin Simon & Associates, and in the Bayh-O'Bannon administration. I was also the founding editor of NUVO Newsweekly, which, for the first time since the Indianapolis Times died decades earlier, provided a second journalistic voice for the city — an offset to the highly conservative Indianapolis Star.

During my early adult years, I attended Indiana University in Bloomington. I lived for a while in Fort Wayne, doing construction and then in South Bend, where I lived in a pink one-bedroom trailer in the back of Shirley's Motel. I worked as a foreman in a car parts factory that occupied the old Studebaker plant. Then came the draft. I spent part of my Army career in Kansas City, Missouri, and the second half of my Army stint near Saigon.

Asphalt Moon is the most recent of the Shanahan novels. If I'm allowed, I'll keep writing the Shanahan stories. The characters have become old friends, and the setting keeps me tied to the city where I was born. It allows me to keep track of its exciting growth, while giving me a very valuable midwestern touchstone.