My favorite job was as an insurance investigator in Manhattan, a simple task in a complex ecosystem. I read Joyce, Agee, Steinbeck and Hemingway while being jostled on the A train. That may be why I later gravitated to writers like Richard Price, George Pelicanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane and SJ Rozan. Readers of my work often describe it as gritty, probably because of the urban settings and subject matter. I like to think of my books as romantic, reflecting secondary influences from Goethe, Rilke, and Cervantes.

I've published a trilogy consisting of work that agents have had all to themselves for a very long time.