The Strangler
Jun. 28, 2010
West End Memories (continued)
Reader “Leonard in Florida” writes with another memory triggered by reading The Strangler: My father played the numbers with a guy by the name of Brownie in the West End for years. He naturally had a formula for figuring the number. One night he came home with a paper bag with $4,000. He had hit [...]
Tags: The Strangler · West End
Jun. 16, 2010
West End Memories
A reader, Leonard in Florida, emails a memory of Boston’s old West End, which figures so prominently in The Strangler. When I was a kid in the 1940′s, my grandfather and father had an egg store at 203 Chambers Street in the West End. It was a landing spot for refugees. There were all types [...]
Tags: The Strangler · West End
Mar. 8, 2010
Life Magazine Photos of Boston’s Strangler Days
A trove of remarkable photographs of Boston during the Strangler siege. The photos, which are eerie and beautiful, were taken by Arthur Rickerby for Life Magazine. View the whole collection here. Above: A woman wears a hatpin in her sleeve to defend herself against the Strangler, 1963.
Tags: The Strangler
Feb. 11, 2010
The Perils of Advertising
Rummaging through my computer recently, I came across this ad (PDF) for The Strangler. It ran in the New York Times and the Boston Globe on February 6, 2007, and in the weekly Boston Phoenix at the same time. There was a radio spot airing that week, as well, which was very fun to hear [...]
Tags: advertising · bookselling · The Strangler
Feb. 2, 2010
The Street Photography of Jules Aarons
An under-appreciated photographer of Boston street life has an exhibit at the Boston Public Library
Tags: Boston Public Library · featured posts · Jules Aarons · The Strangler
Nov. 25, 2009
Title Trouble
I remember the moment I came up with the title “Mission Flats” for my first novel. It was late, long past midnight. The house was quiet. I lay in bed unable to sleep, which is common for me. (I am a chronic insomniac.) I had been playing around with the word “mission” for the title. [...]
Tags: Defending Jacob · Mission Flats · The Strangler
Oct. 22, 2009
A Favorite Review
I don’t want to turn this blog into a sellathon for my books. I am quite bad at self-promotion, probably because it makes me so uncomfortable. But as I’ve been transferring material from my old web site to this new blog, I ran across a review of The Strangler that I particularly relished and want [...]
Tags: The Strangler
Oct. 21, 2009
A “Strangler” Word Cloud
My novel The Strangler rendered as a word cloud.
Tags: The Strangler
Sep. 8, 2009
Inside “The Strangler”: The New Boston, 1963
One of the frustrations in writing a historical novel like The Strangler is that so much of your research never sees the light of day. When the book is done, all those index cards so lovingly compiled get wrapped up in a rubber band and tossed into a drawer, and the reader is left to [...]
Tags: Inside "The Strangler" · The Strangler
