You hold that book in your hands now.
I also had another idea that I thought would add something to the books for the loyal readers of private eye novels. I decided that Jacoby ought to meet some of the other fictional P.I.s in the genre. In that way maybe we could create a “shared world” feeling for the readers. So I asked some if my friends if they’d allow me to use their characters in a few scenes, and put just a few words into their mouths. To my delight they all thought it sounded like a fun thing to do. And so Michael Collins’s Dan Fortune, Jonathan Valin’s Harry Stoner and Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective have all made cameo appearances in the Jacoby books. And to return the favor Bill Pronzini (and his wife, Marcia Muller) gave Jacoby a walk-on in one of their collaborative novels, so that Jacoby has also appeared in a book with Sharon McCone. (Not necessarily a new idea, since Donald Westlake and Joe Gores had done something akin to this years earlier with a Parker/DKA crossover, but I believe I managed to take the idea to a whole new level.)
Robert J. Randisi
About the Author
Robert J. Randisi, recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, is a publishing phenomenon. With more than five hundred novels under his belt, he shows no sign of slowing down. His latest work includes The End of Brooklyn, which Booklist in its starred review called “dark, brooding and thoroughly compelling.” The six-volume Miles Jacoby series, reissued by Perfect Crime, brings back the prize-fighter PI in novels as infused with the harmonies of New York as a Canarsie cab driver. “If [it] moved any faster you’d have to nail it down to read it,” said Elmore Leonard of the first Jacoby book. Described by Booklist as “the last of the pulp writers,” Randisi has published in the western, mystery, horror, science fiction and men’s adventure genres. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and from 1973 through 1981 was a civilian employee of the New York City Police Department, working out of the Sixty-SeventhPrecinct in Brooklyn. After forty-one years in New York, he now lives in Clarksville, Missouri, with writer Marthayn Pelegrimas in a small house overlooking the Mississippi.
Also by Robert J. Randisi
THE GUILT EDGE
232 pages. $13.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-3-0
THE BOTTOM OF EVERY BOTTLE
186 pages. $12.95. ISBN: 978-09825157-1-6
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME I (1982-1995)
336 PAGES. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-4-7
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME II (1996-2009)
282 pages. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-6-1
Available at bookstores, Amazon, and at ww.PerfectCrimeBooks.com
Eye in the Ring Page 22