Day: November 6, 2013

My love affair with detective fiction began decades ago in a far-away country where people read and write from right to left. Paperbacks began to arrive in Israel from the U.S. and England, and I couldn’t resist the pictorial, enticing covers. I ploughed through the works of American writers like Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, S.S. Van Dine, Erle Stanley Gardner, and the English writers Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edgar Wallace, and Sax Rohmer. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles left a lasting impression. What could be more intriguing to a young, eager reader than strong plots, eccentric sleuths, pulsating action, heart-stopping climaxes, and matters of life-or-death?

I am a director by profession. I have staged dramas, comedies and musicals for off-Broadway troupes, national road companies, drama departments at universities, and summer stock; I’ve done Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams – but I have always had…