The Dead Man's Eyes (Introduction)

Untitled, unsigned introduction to the short story.

Essay starts: "A crime story, one of the few I've ever written. Crime fiction has never interested me as a reader, let alone as a writer. I've read the Sherlock Holmes stories with pleasure, yes, and some Simenons, and in 1985 I suddenly read seven or eight Elmore Leonard books in one unceasing burst."

Essay finishes: "I wrote it in a moment of agreeable ease and fluency in the summer of 1987, and Alice Turner of Playboy bought it in an equally uncomplicated way and published it in her August, 1988 issue. I'm never enthusiastic about complications, but the summer is a time when I particularly like everything to go smoothly. This one did." [Source: PR# 834559]