This one’s for all the people who’ve

come up to me over the past ten years

to ask me if I was ever going to write

another book about Bernie. If half of

you buy it, I’ll be rich.

It’s also for Sue Grafton, a very

classy lady indeed. And for Steve King,

who wanted a book about cats.

And it’s for Lynne. You want to know

a secret? They’re all for Lynne….

“Not a bad-looking Burglar,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d happen to have a decent Alibi?”

I didn’t hear the italics. They’re present not to indicate vocal stress but to show that they were titles, or at least truncated titles. “A” Is for Alibi and “B” Is for Burglar, those were the books in question, and he had just laid a copy of the latter volume on the counter in front of me, which might have given me a clue. But it didn’t, and I didn’t hear the italics. What I heard was a stocky fellow with a gruff voice calling me a burglar, albeit a not-bad-looking one, and asking if I had an alibi, and I have to tell you it gave me a turn.

Because I am a burglar, although that’s something I’ve tried to keep from getting around. I’m also a bookseller, in which capacity I was sitting on a stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books. In fact, I’d just about managed to forsake burglary entirely in favor of bookselling, having gone over a year without letting myself into a stranger’s abode. Lately, though, I’d been feeling on the verge of what those earnest folk in twelve-step programs would very likely call a slip.