Born and raised in the Midwest, and a longtime resident of Florida, Ozeroff wore an aviators’ squint as he mulled the “writerly” attributes of his new home.

“It really seems to have an appreciation for matters literary,” said Ozeroff, 55, the middle son in a family of three boys who moved to Murrieta last year with his widowed mother, Sheila.

He presented as evidence one of the first genuine glimpses he got of this community — a talk he gave for the Friends of the Murrieta Library in March.

“That talk I gave (at the Murrieta library) was very well attended, very well received,” Ozeroff said. “Everybody seems to have a real interest in matters literary out here. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good time speaking to a group before.”

Ozeroff worked a number of jobs before his first book, “Days of Smoke,” was published in 2009 and received the Gold Medal for Historical Fiction from the Military Writers Society of America. The book’s protagonist is a World War II Luftwaffe pilot conflicted over his strong sense of national pride and his growing wariness of the Nazi regime.

His manuscript was praised for the detailed descriptions of the air war over Europe, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the vintage aircraft of the era.

Although he has an MBA and ran a small insurance service company, Ozeroff is a lifelong tinkerer who, according to his mother, learned to pick combination locks as a teenager (to assist school janitors who wanted to avoid using bolt cutters on locks abandoned on students’ lockers) and later worked in motorcycle restoration. He has also held a pilot’s license for 35 years and insists that if this writing thing doesn’t work out, he has a couple of good blue-collar fallback options in cabinet making and installing, and dishwashing.

I’m a dishwasher of note,” he noted with a wry smile. “But I’m hoping, I’m trusting, that won’t be necessary.”

This writerly thing is a bit of a family affair. Ozeroff’s younger brother Barry, 54, a former SWAT officer who now works as a law enforcement negotiator in Oregon, is also an author of three novels, all police procedurals. He’ll tease Mark about taking so long to write a book, then compliment him for creating a uniquely sympathetic character — a Nazi soldier with a conscience — and extoll his capacity for verisimilitude.

Another brother, David, 57, is a retired Navy captain currently teaching high school in San Diego.

Asked if she had read “Days of Smoke”, Sheila Ozeroff, 79, laughed.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “I edited it practically. No, but really I insist on reading stuff as they’re writing it.

“Mark is so classy and so concise. and Barry, of course, it’s a whole different kind of writing, it’s shoot-em-up. That’s what he does, that’s what he knows and loves. It’s totally at different ends of the spectrum.”

Ozeroff continues to explore the “writerly” qualities of Southwest Riverside County. He gave an Authors Spotlight talk at the Sun City Library in March. Additionally, he recently dropped by the Murrieta Senior Center to check out the area’s book club scene, and came away with a booking. He will address a local book club in August, after they read “Days of Smoke.”

In the meantime, Ozeroff labors on his new novel, intermittently passing some of the pages on to his mother. Tentatively entitled “In the Weeds” — it tells the story of a former Air Force FAC, or Forward Air Controller, who lands in Florida after his high-risk tour of Vietnam concludes, and finds work as a drug-running aviator.

Said Ozeroff: “It is just a blast to write.”

For more on the books of Mark and Barry Ozeroff, visit http://www.ozeroffbooks.com.