In editing my upcoming new edition of my bibliography, Murder and Mayhem: An Annotated Bibliography of Gay and Queer Males in Mystery, 1909-2018, I am now going through 2022 and reading the books I missed. One such book, Burn it all Down by Nicolas DiDomizio, was listed as a caper in my spreadsheet of books to include in the new edition.
In early 2014, I wrote to the publishing company MLR in the hopes they could put me in touch with Richard Stevenson. I had fallen in love with his Donald Strachey series and had just finished collecting the first editions of his books and had hoped he would be willing to sign them for me. Laura was kind enough to forward my email on to him, but unfortunately, he was in Cambodia at the time, as he often was during winter.
I have been around books all of my life. My mother was the president of the local library friends’ group, which meant that at the age of eight, I was carting boxes of books up from the basement for the semi-annual book sale. My reward and payment was a box of books. By my teen years, my bedroom looked like a library: shelves evenly distributed and books stacked from floor to ceiling. I have loved books very early in life.
