John Morgan Wilson's SPIDER SEASON is coming!

My favorite mystery writer, John Morgan Wilson, wrote me an e-mail note today thanking me for MadProfessah's review of his most recently published book, Rhapsody in Blood, and to tell me that he has a new book, entitled Spider Season coming out late this Fall! December 9, 2008, according to Amazon.com. You can read the first chapter of the book at Wilson's personal website.

First of all, how cool of it is to get a letter from a writer whose work you admire and they tell you that they like the review you wrote of their work?

Secondly, how exciting is that finally after two long years, a new episode in the Benjamin Justice series will be out soon?

If you haven't heard of Benjamin Justice, he is the fictional openly gay, ex-reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Los Angeles Times that had to be returned after a huge scandal.

He always seems to find himself in complicated murder mysteries set in Southern California and Los Angeles (the first several books are actually set in the heart of the gay ghetto itself: West Hollywood).

The first seven books in the series are: Simple Justice (1996), Revision of Justice (1997), Justice at Risk (1999), The Limits of Justice (2000), Blind Eye (2003), Moth and Flame (2004) and Rhapsody in Blood (2006).

I am thinking of re-reading (and reviewing) the first 6 books or so for this blog before the 8th one comes out in December. I would strongly recommend reading them in order, although each one is self-contained, the impact of the events on the character is deepened if you have experienced the events of the previous books.