The first book in the V.I. Warshawski series, 1982

On New Year’s Eve, flushed with champagne, I made a secret resolution to write a novel in 1979 or send that fantasy packing along with my daydreams of singing at La Scala or dancing with Nureyev. The next day I began:

I looked hopefully in my wallet, but found only the two greasy singles which had been there in the morning. I could get a sandwich, or a pack of cigarettes and a cheap shot of scotch. I sighed and looked down at the Wabash Avenue el tracks.

Nine months later, I’d added about fifty pages to this unpromising opening and thought I should resign myself to a life of selling computers to insurance agents. At that point a co-worker named Mary Hogan, who knew about my efforts, showed me the Northwestern University fall extension catalog. Stuart Kaminsky was teaching an evening course called “Writing Detective Fiction for Publication.” I felt like Alice finding the mushroom-just what I needed to get to be the right size.

Stuart read my puny story with great care. He gave me essential advice for thinking about my character and my story. In the process, V. I. stopped smoking and took up my whiskey, Black Label. Most important, Stuart became the voice I needed to hear, the voice that said, “You can write. You can do this thing.” Without Stuart I would not have had the confidence to push the story through to the end. That is why Indemnity Only is dedicated to him.

Whenever I read the memoirs of a writer like Sartre, who says he knew from childhood he was “destined for words,” or Bellow, who knew he “was born to be a performing or interpretive creature,” I wonder what unacknowledged voice spoke to them as children.