Like the time I was writing about the rape and murder of an unwed mother/call girl and nearly got raped and murdered myself. Then, last Christmas, when I was working on the story of a young Macy’s salesgirl who was killed over an oatmeal box full of diamonds, I got shot! And just a few months after that-after my leg and shoulder wounds had healed and I was running all over Manhattan investigating the so-called suicide of a famous TV star-I was almost thrown to my death over a mezzanine railing.

Get the picture? Danger clings to me like a possessive lover. Or maybe, as I noted before, it’s the other way around. But whatever the case (i.e., whoever’s doing the clinging), one thing is inescapably true: Danger and I have a very intimate relationship.

This drives my boyfriend, NYPD homicide detective Dan Street, right out of his cautious, crime-busting mind. Every time I begin working on another unsolved murder story, he pops his cork altogether. He starts stomping around like a storm trooper, smoking one Lucky Strike after another, getting all red in his glowering yet gorgeous face, and flatly forbidding me to get further involved. If Dan had his way, I’d quit my job, take up embroidery instead of writing, and never again set foot outside the confines of my tiny, roach-infested Greenwich Village apartment.

It’s nice that Dan worries about me so much, I guess. I surely wouldn’t like it if he didn’t care. But as a twenty-nine-year-old Korean War widow who has to make her own way in the world… and who prides herself on her own pluck and ingenuity… and who has longed to be a crime and mystery writer since she was an innately curious (okay, insanely nosy) girl of fourteen-well, I’m forced to admit that I sometimes find Dan’s concern for my safety a bit bothersome (all right, annoying as hell).