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Les Roberts came to mystery writing after twenty-four years in Hollywood, having written and/or produced more than 2500 half hours of network and syndicated television. He was the first producer and head writer of The Hollywood Squares, and has written for The Lucy Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and The Man From U.N.C.L.E, among others. In 1987 he won the very first "Best First Private Eye Novel Contest" for An Infinite Number of Monkeys. In 1988 he created Cleveland private eye Milan Jacovich in Pepper Pike, followed by twelve more novels. Les Roberts won the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature and has been voted "Cleveland's Favorite Author." He is past president of the Private Eye Writers of America and the regular mystery book critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He has been a professional actor, singer, businessman, teacher, and jazz musician. His hobby is cooking, and he lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with a Russian blue cat named Sonny who has an attitude. His website can be found at http://www.lesroberts.com.
The Scent of Spiced Oranges
The first-ever complete volume of short stories by novelist and Cleveland resident Les Roberts, collected over the past twelve years from various publications and anthologies.
Les Roberts' Summer Reading List
Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
Dennis is not only a friend, but probably the best writer under the age of forty in America. I would no more miss his latest than jump off a tall building. I've been saving this one for summer, until I finish my own project, and it keeps glowing in the dark at me from the top of my TBR pile.
Cypress Grove
by James Sallis
Sallis is another writer whose work I look forward to. He is unconventional, and readers have to "work at it" to appreciate just how good he is, but the challenge is well worth it. This one is NOT part of the Lew Griffin series.
Perdition House
by Kathryn R. Wall
Wall is a fairly new and very elegant writer. She self-published the first two books in this series, featuring an amateur sleuth named Bay Tanner, a bred-in-the-bone Southern gentlewoman who comes from the Low Country of South Carolina near Hilton Head. Perdition House is the first of a two-book deal with St. Martin's Minotaur.
Cyanide Wells
by Marcia Muller
In a review of one of her earlier books I wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I said that Marcia Muller was "one of America's finest writers of any genre." This new one, Cyanide Wells, is not part of her famous Sharon McCone, but a stand-alone novel I can't wait to read. And nobody knows the territory --- northern California and its seacoast, small towns, and inland forests, like Marcia Muller.
Street Soldier - My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob
by Edward J. Mackenzie Jr. & Phyllis Karas (with Ross A. Muscato)
This is one of my nonfiction books for the summer. The author, "Eddie Mac," was a real bad-ass and, just from skimming the pages, he isn't easy on himself or anybody else. Perhaps it's his co-writers, but there is a certain grace about the prose that I find very appealing. And of course, who can resist a good old-fashioned mob book?
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Summer Reading Lists
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