SJ Rozan, a native New Yorker, is the author of at least eighteen novels and six dozen short stories. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story. She’s also the recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award and has received the Life Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.
Rozan's new novel is The Mayors of New York.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Rozan's reply:
I read a lot of non-fiction. I just started Geoff Dyer's The Last Days of Roger Federer. It's about endings, of many kinds, a good book for autumn. Dyer'sVisit S.J. Rozan's website.prose is sharp and clear and the structure of his essays always makes sense. He writes about a range things, including sports. Finding a writer who can articulate the larger societal and, yes, spiritual implications of sports is always a thrill for me.
Two recent fiction reads also have to make this list, though, because I'm very high on them.
One is a fantasy novel, a genre I dip into occasionally. By Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle, Ebony Gate is set in San Francisco among people who look like us, but aren't like us... What I love about this book is the breadth of the authors' imagination and the discipline with which they wield it. Vivid descriptions,propulsive action, and a wry, likeable narrator who abruptly quit her job as an assassin -- how can you go wrong?
The other, equally imaginative but very different, is Rachel Cantor's Half-Life of a Stolen Sister. A re-imagining of the life of the Brontë family, set now and told through narration, letters, diaries, plays... This book swept me up from the beginning. It's a tribute to Cantor's writing that although I know how the story goes -- it's the lives of the Brontës, after all -- I kept hoping for better for them.
The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.
The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.
Q&A with S. J. Rozan.
The Page 69 Test: Family Business.
--Marshal Zeringue
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