All Good Things Must End Sometime

As it turns out, January’s crime fiction column for the Baltimore Sun was my last. After four and a half years, my column will no longer continue in the paper because of budget cuts – which, if you’ve followed news of the Tribune company’s fortunes, should not come as a surprise. The irony of that column being the final one was that it focused solely on debut fiction, which seems a fitting way to cap what was a very good and rewarding run.

There are several people to thank. First, to Mike Ollove, who contacted me out of the blue back in the summer of 2004 to inquire if I might be interested in writing for them, and proved to be one of the very best editors I have ever had the pleasure to work with. To Larry Williams and Liz Atwood for continued enthusiasm in their editorial capacities, and to Laura Lippman and Terry Teachout for convincing me to go for it in the first place. Lastly, but most important, to all my readers, in Baltimore and beyond – even if only a single book review made its mark, I did my job and then some.

“Dark Passages” at the Los Angeles Times will continue for the forseeable future, and a few other possibilities are in the works. Not to mention that one of the natural evolution points for Confessions is to run longer reviews and think pieces of books I read and recommend (or not!), so expect to see more of that down the line as well. And if you need a book fix at the Sun, look no further than Read Street, the entertaining and community-driven blog edited by Dave Rosenthal and Nancy Johnston.