After college and the Army and a stint on newspapers as a copyboy, proofreader and reporter, I joined the New York City Police Department as a Patrolman in 1967. For most of the next 18 years I patrolled the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan as patrol officer and sergeant, except for stints as speech writer, Police Academy Instructor and lawyer within the Department. I was a Patrolman during the time of the Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption and after, in the Department's Post-Knapp revival. I knew the reformer Frank Serpico and the notorious 'Prince of the City', Robert Leuci. I was on the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn on July 13, 1977, when the lights went out all over the city triggering a night and a day of looting, recounted in "The Bronx Is Burning". When I retired in 1987 as a Lieutenant of Police, I had a law degree, earned at night from Fordham University School of Law.
In 1989, I joined the New York City Legal Aid Society, Criminal Defense Division, as a trial lawyer. For the next 18 years, I worked in the Manhattan and Queens County Criminal Courts. Born and raised in New York City, I relocated to Albany, New York in 2007. I now practice in the Criminal
and Family Courts of Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties...and write fiction.
In 2002, I sold a pilot script, entitled 'The System', to Aaron Spelling-TV Productions and NBC. In 2004, a short story in "Brooklyn Noir", an anthology of crime fiction, and subsequent stories in "Manhattan Noir", "Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing But the Truth", "Queens Noir" (also Editor) and "Best American Mystery Stories 2007". A first novel, "Bodies In Winter", a police proceedural, from Severn House in 2009; and a sequel, "The Cold Room", in September 2011.
