E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

I am a fortunate son. My grandfather was a professor of music. My aunt was a concert pianist of international renown. My father loved classical music and having little choice other than to retreat upstairs to my room, I learned to listen and appreciate it. Which I think my father appreciated as well. But I think my real appreciation of classical and Baroque music occurred gradually, peaked by my acquisition of two close in center section box seats for The Florida Orchestra (an outstanding symphony orchestra). That's when I truly learned to appreciate such musical greats as  Bach , particularly his Brandenburg Concertos ,  Beethoven 's 7th Symphony with it's incredible (and incredibly moving) Adante,  Piano Concerto, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Dvorak 's Symphony for the New World (the performance of in New York which he was able to attend and brought him a long standing ovation), pretty much anything by Chopin , and Mozart 's Ein Klein Nacht Music . I cannot r...

As with my Tony Lowell series, police detectives and independent contractors working in simultaneous partnership and rivalry is a common and repeated theme. Because it works: in books, films, and television series (often based on books, as we all know). In this blog I will focus on books featuring police detectives (or inspectors, or investigators, depending on author and location). Many of the first such books were written by retired police detectives, such as The Borrowed Shield  (1925) by former New York City Police Commissioner  Richard Enright , then Homicide (1937) by Southern California police detective  Leslie T. White . Across the Pond, former Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard  Sir   Basil Thomson  presented P.C. Richardson's First Case , in 1933. The original alphabet murder mystery was V as in Victim , by Lawrence Treat, published in 1945. According to NY Times critic Anthony Boucher (the namesake of the crime-fest Bouchercon co...