Six so far. The other four are:

REVISION OF JUSTICE, which is set in the cutthroat world of screenwriting and ambitious Hollywood "wannabes", was published in 1997. It is perhaps the darkest and grittiest novel in the series, particularly in dealing with a secondary character who is dying of AIDS. It also marks my attempt to craft stronger, more complex plots, with to better connect the various suspects and secondary characters.

THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE, came out in August, 2000. The storyline: When a trusting young woman offers Justice an unusual ghost writing job, then turns up dead, his search for her killer thrusts him into the sordid world of celebrity biography writing. Reading between the lines of a best-selling celeb bio, he uncovers a link to a group of wealthy Hollywood pedophiles, and begins to unravel a murder scenario more evil and horrific than any he’s ever encountered.

BLIND EYE, the fifth Justice novel came out in August 2003.  Justice finds himself in the midst of a complex case involving a decades old child murder, a powerful and controversial Cardinal, and elements of his own dark past.

MOTH AND FLAME,  the sixth Justice novel comes out in December, 2004.  Justice and his close friend, Alexandra Templeton, are plunged into a dangerous murder investigation that peels back layers of West Hollywood history, on the brink of its 20th anniversary as a city, with a complicated plot tied to many of its most famous architectural landmarks.  Another dark, character-driven mystery, in which both Justice and Templeton take fascinating new turns in their personal lives.

Unapologetically, though I don’t label or categorize my series as "gay."

The novels are about much more than his sexuality, just as any human being is about more than his or her sexual orientation. Although his personal life provides subplot material, erotic scenes account for only a tiny fraction of any one book. (That said, they are frankly and unabashedly presented, organic to the story.) The plots revolve around greed, hatred, love, ambition, family, loss, retribution, redemption -- universal themes involving all kinds of women and men. Kinsey Milhone and Spenser are straight, for example, but those series are not categorized as "heterosexual mysteries"; I see no reason to confine or ghettoize mine.

There’s no real way to know, but I suspect not. From the correspondence I get and the reaction at bookstore signings and elsewhere, I believe it’s about 50/50, maybe even leaning toward more straight readers. I believe the series appeals to gay readers, mystery buffs, and readers in general who tend to be more adventurous and open-minded. As one straight female bookstore owner said to me: "I like the Justice mysteries because they take me to places I would never go, and expose me to different, sometimes unsettling perspectives." The characters and storylines reflect both gay and straight backgrounds. (And some that don’t fit either of those categories!) Alexandra Templeton, for example, is shamelessly heterosexual.

The Benjamin Justice mysteries are carried everywhere. That includes independent mystery bookstores, gay/lesbian bookstores, the chains and sales via the Internet, such as BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com. About 1,200 stores nationwide, I’m told. If your favorite bookstore does not carry a title you want, please order it!  Check out the book ordering page in this web site for ordering information.

So far, each of the Justice mysteries has placed him in a different writing field in which I’ve had personal experience -- newspaper reporting, screenwriting, fact-based TV writing, and Hollywood celebrity reporting. I felt I could bring more detail and credibility if I used occupational fields I’m personally familiar with, while cutting down on research time. I also try to impart some kind of special knowledge of each writing field that I hope will be of interest to writers or aspiring writers. The last chapter of SIMPLE JUSTICE, for example, is a virtual how-to on the craft of interviewing, while also serving as the climactic sleuthing device. REVISION OF JUSTICE delves into screenplay structure, and the novel itself mirrors the structural model from a screenwriting book that is one of the clues to the murders. And so on.

No, he ages naturally from book to book, as if in real time, and he changes accordingly, along with his evolving life.

We certainly have our differences, but Justice definitely reflects many of my own feelings, viewpoints, and experiences, albeit dramatized and transformed into fiction through my writer’s imagination. I doubt there’s been a mystery series hero or heroine written, particularly in the first person, as mine is, that does not deeply reflect the author. As Sue Grafton once said of her character, Kinsey Milhone: "She’s the younger, slimmer, more courageous version of me!" (Or words to that effect.) I would like to state for the record that, while Justice had a very violent and abusive father, my own father, now deceased, was a gentle, kind man, with whom I shared a loving relationship. Justice’s feelings toward his father in the novels more closely reflect the problems I had with my abusive stepfather, who is also deceased. That aspect of the character, by the way, was never planned or envisioned; it came out spontaneously in the writing of the first book, quite a surprise to me. The writing process is full of surprises like that. Books seem to take on their own reality, their own life force, when the writing is going well.

I’d like to think it’s the very personal voice of the narrator, Benjamin Justice; his complex personality; the emotional honesty of the writing; and the craftsmanship I try to bring to it. But readers will be the ultimate judges, won’t they?

I loved mysteries as a kid, from the Hardy Boys to Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, and later Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy L. Sayers, Patricia Highsmith, Ross Macdonald, et al. I read just about any mystery I could get my hands on as a youngster, including dozens of Perry Mason paperbacks by Erle Stanley Gardner. In college, I gave up on mysteries, which I’d begun to find formulaic and thin. I went "literary" -- until the early 1990s, when I discovered Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress. The book and the character of Easy Rawlins re-ignited my love of the mystery genre. I started reading them again, and soon realized how much the genre had changed, opening up to a wider diversity of styles, characters, subject matter, etc. With a couple of decades behind me as a reporter, I was looking to stretch into fiction. I started noodling the character of Benjamin Justice and other characters that intrigued me, then began working on the structure and outline of a plot. I was between TV writing gigs in 1995 when I wrote SIMPLE JUSTICE in seven weeks. I sent it to my agent, who sold it fairly quickly to Doubleday, where I was signed to write three more Justice mysteries.

I suppose it’s the sense of someone committing themselves to righting a wrong, to searching for justice, or at least the truth. Making sense out of chaos, bringing some form and structure to a world turned upside down by violence and madness. I’m also fascinated by that fine line that separates murderers from the rest of us, and what causes them to cross that line and extinguish human life.

I enjoy and admire so many, it’s tough to answer. Certainly Walter Mosley, as noted above. I tend toward darker, psychological mysteries, and particularly like Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. Lawrence Block, Laurie R. King, James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly would be on my list as well, among many others. To be honest, though, I probably read more outside the mystery genre. I just finished the first three books by the "literary" author Michael Cunningham -- A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and The Hours (which won the Pulitzer). As I read, I was both enthralled and humbled by his gifts and achievements.

I can’t remember everyone, but at the Edgar dinner, I mentioned certain pioneers who stretched the boundaries of the genre, such as Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, George Baxt, Joseph Hansen, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley. In my Lammy acceptance speech, which was read by someone else (I couldn’t attend), I thanked Baxt, Hansen, Sandra Scoppettone, Katherine V. Forrest, Michael Nava and I believe a few others. (Sorry, I didn’t keep a copy of the speech.)

I guess it’s the great people I’ve met. When you have a mystery novel published, your world suddenly opens up. The Edgar broadens it a little more. You meet other writers whose work you’ve read and admired which is kind of astonishing. And you meet your readers, people who let you know what your writing means to them. I was actually stopped on the street by a reader who told me my first two novels inspired him to finally start writing. That kind of contact and feedback is very gratifying, an unexpected bonus that comes with getting published.

Fiction, definitely. It’s much riskier, especially if your work is character-driven, because you put so much of yourself (and expose so much) in the material. As a nonfiction writer, it’s much easier to hide behind the guise of objectivity, distancing yourself behind facts, figures and other people’s quotes, writing about other people’s experiences while keeping your own quite private. What’s that old saying? There’s more truth in fiction than in fact. If you’re willing to deal with that truth, and use it, the writing can be creatively very satisfying, even cathartic.

SIMPLE JUSTICE continues to sell steadily in paperback, after more than four years in print. A lot of readers like to start with that one and move on chronologically through the series. Although I’m not discouraging anyone from buying the new hardcover!

SIMPLE JUSTICE and REVISION OF JUSTICE are published by Hayakawa in Japan. SIMPLE JUSTICE is also available in a German edition, published by Argument Verlag.

Japanese edition of Simple Justice.	Japanese edition of Revision of Justice.	German edition of Simple Justice.

I've had a number of offers to develop the Justice character and stories for film and/or TV.  I've turned each down for now in lieu of a partnership with two experienced producers, one of them a longtime friend of mine.  We will be attempting to get Justice off the ground for film or TV on our own