There I go, lying again (I’ve been doing a lot of that lately). I’m not really thinking about leaving my job. I’ve always wanted to be a crime and mystery writer-ever since I was a skinny midwestern teenager, eating potato chips in bed and reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely for the first time-and now that I finally am one, at the grand old age of twenty-eight, I’m not about to quit. I’d change my name before I’d change my job.

But I’m not going to do that, either. I was deeply in love with my late husband Bob Turner, and even though he’s been gone for three years now (Bob was killed in Korea in late 1951), and even though we lived together as man and wife for only one short, glorious, rapturous month, I will keep my married name until the day I die-or get hitched again, whichever comes first. And the way things have been going for me in the last few months, I’m sure to be pushing up pansies long before my new boyfriend, NYPD Homicide Detective Sergeant Dan Street, ever dreams of popping the question.

You probably think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Dan’s so mad at me right now he’d rather kill me than marry me. Plus, I keep getting myself into so damn much trouble-serious, scary, life-threatening trouble-it’ll be a flat-out miracle if some overexcited homicidal maniac doesn’t beat him to the punch.

Eight months ago, when I started working on my first story for Daring Detective-investigating and writing about the rape and murder of a pretty blonde waitress/mother/call girl named Babs Comstock-I learned just how dangerous my line of work can be: extremely dangerous, if you must know. I came this close to meeting the same awful fate as the pitiful young victim I was writing about. And by the time I finished investigating this story-my sixth for the magazine, and the one I’m preparing to tell you now-I was a mangled and bloody mess.