Gotta Go

The uncles are all dead. They were a hearty lot, the Paulsons. Lived into their nineties most of them, as did their sister, my mom. The last of them died recently and it got me thinking about my favorite, Uncle Harry, who passed on several years ago.

I lost my own dad when I was five. I probably know him best from family stories; sometimes I don’t know if my memories are of the stories told about him or are actually memories of him. My favorite story/memory is of us both sick, me in one bedroom and him across the hallway in another. My mom set up a series of mirrors opposite our beds reflecting off a common mirror in the hallway so that we could look at one another. My dad had these wonderful big ears. I remember him waving at me one morning, his ears seeming to hover around his head like a lopsided halo.

He died the next day.

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Being Alone in a Crowd: Alafair Burke’s New York Crime Fiction

Alafair Burke, a former deputy district attorney and current professor of criminal law at New York’s Hofstra Univesity, is the author of two crime series, one featuring featuring Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid, and the second focusing on NYPD detective, Ellie Hatcher. Publishers Weekly dubbed the third installment of the latter series, the 2010 novel 212, a “white-knuckle thriller.” Similar praise came from Booklist, calling the book “up-to-the-minute, action-packed crime fiction.”

Burke’s first stand-alone crime fiction, Long Gone, is just out and has earned praise from fellow writers. Dennis Lehane found the work “a tremendous novel, and Alafair Burke is one of the finest young crime writers working today.” Likewise, Nelson DeMille termed Long Gone “a very clever and very smart novel by a very clever and smart writer.”

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