Peter Blauner

Last updated
Peter Blauner
Born (1959-10-29) October 29, 1959 (age 64)
Occupation
  • Author
  • journalist
  • television producer
NationalityAmerican
Notable awards Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel (1992)
Website
peterblauner.com

Peter Blauner (born October 29, 1959 [1] ) is an American author, journalist, and television producer.

Contents

Blauner has written nine novels, including Slow Motion Riot, which won the 1992 Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America [2] and was named an International Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement . [3]

Early career

Blauner started in journalism as an assistant to Pete Hamill, before reporting for the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the Norwich Bulletin in Connecticut. [4] From 1982 to 1991, Blauner wrote for New York , covering crime, politics, and oddball city characters. [5] Blauner also was the sole author of a full-length issue of the magazine, "The Voices of New York," (April 11, 1988), which was an oral history of the city from 1968 to 1988. He interviewed more than 70 famous and infamous New Yorkers for the issue. [6]

Novelist

In 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic, Blauner took a leave of absence from his journalism job and spent six months as a volunteer probation officer. He used those experiences as research for his first novel Slow Motion Riot. [7] It won the Edgar award, and named an "International Book of the Year" in the Times Literary Supplement by Patricia Highsmith, who called it "unforgetttable." [8] Blauner then spent several years researching a novel about Atlantic City, New Jersey. Casino Moon was published in 1994. [9] For his next book, Blauner spent a year as a volunteer at a homeless shelter and visited the underground dwellings of "mole people" living beneath Manhattan's Riverside Park. The resulting novel The Intruder [10] was a New York Times bestseller [11] and a bestseller in England as well. [12] Man of the Hour appeared in 1999: a pre-9/11 suspense novel about Middle Eastern terrorism in New York, the hysteria of modern celebrity, and the public school system. [13] Blauner's next novel The Last Good Day, published in 2003 was a mystery story, set in the suburbs outside New York City in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. [14] Slipping Into Darkness was published by Little Brown in 2006. It told the story of a young man who spends twenty years in prison for a crime that he may or may not have committed, and the detective who put him there. [15] [16]

In his book "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft," Stephen King names two of Blauner's novels, The Intruder and The Last Good Day, on his recommended reading list. [17]

Later career

In more recent years, Blauner has been writing for television. He has been on the writing staffs of three shows in the Law & Order franchise. [18] He served as a co-executive producer of Law & Order: SVU, where he was the writer of the show's 300th episode, "Manhattan Vigil," which was loosely based on his 2007 short story "Going, Going, Gone." [19] A 2013 episode, "Legitimate Rape," co-written with Kevin Fox, was nominated for an Edgar award for best teleplay. [20] [21] [22] From 2015 to 2018, he wrote as a co-executive producer for the CBS show, "Blue Bloods." [23] His first novel in eleven years, Proving Ground, was published by Minotaur/St. Martin's Press in 2017. [24] His eighth novel, Sunrise Highway, was published by Minotaur/St. Martin's in September, 2018. [25] It reached the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction. [26]

Blauner's new novel, Picture in the Sand, which spans sixty years and the distance from Hollywood to Cairo, was published by Minotaur/St. Martin's Press on January 3, 2023. It is his first work of historical fiction. [27]

Novels

Short stories

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References

  1. ↑ "Blauner, Peter 1959- | Encyclopedia.com".
  2. ↑ Dallas Morning News, May 2, 1992
  3. ↑ Times Literary Supplement, December 6, 1991
  4. ↑ Salemy, Shirley. "Bonfire in Slow Motion," Manhattan Spirit newspaper. April 18, 1991
  5. ↑ Smith, Chris. "Walk on the Wild Side" New York magazine, June 10, 1991
  6. ↑ "The Voices of New York," New York magazine, April 11, 1988
  7. ↑ Smith, Chris. "Walk on the Wild Side." New York magazine. June 10, 1991.
  8. ↑ TLS, December 6, 1991
  9. ↑ "Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction".
  10. ↑ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Even for a Rich Lawyer, City Life Can Be Murder," New York Times, July 4, 1996
  11. ↑ The New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1997
  12. ↑ The Observer, London, September 14, 1997
  13. ↑ Sutherland, Scott (25 April 1999). "Books in Brief: Fiction & Poetry". The New York Times.
  14. ↑ Minezesheimer, Bob. "Setting steers 'Day, Winterkill.' USA Today, May 27, 2003
  15. ↑ Briefly Noted, The New Yorker, February 27, 2006
  16. ↑ "Boy, Have I Got a Book for You".
  17. ↑ King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 10th anniversary edition, Scribner, New York 2010 ISBN   978-1-4391-5681-0
  18. ↑ "'Law & Order: SVU' producer: We wrote Alec Baldwin's part 'larger than life'". TODAY.com.
  19. ↑ "The Best American Mystery Stories 2007". www.mysteryscenemag.com. Archived from the original on 2018-05-29.
  20. ↑ "Peter Blauner". IMDb .
  21. ↑ Publishers Weekly, January 16, 2014
  22. ↑ "2014 Edgar Winners Announced".
  23. ↑ "Get Me Rewind: Why Current Hit TV Series Live in the Past". The New York Observer . 30 March 2016.
  24. ↑ "London Briefcase 2016: What U.S. Agencies Will be Selling at the London Book Fair".
  25. ↑ "Sunrise Highway". Macmillan.
  26. ↑ "Bestsellers List Sunday". www.latimes.com. Archived from the original on 2018-09-27. Retrieved 2018-09-26.
  27. ↑ Blauner, Peter (3 January 2023). Picture in the Sand. St. Martin's Publishing. ISBN   978-1250851017.
  28. ↑ The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, New York. 2007. ISBN   978-0-618-81263-9
  29. ↑ "Selected Shorts: Gone Missing - WNYC". www.wnyc.org. Archived from the original on 2014-11-23.
  30. ↑ Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and The Dead, Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2011. ISBN   978-0-446-55587-6
  31. ↑ Blauner, Peter. The Final Testament, Mysterious Press, New York, 2013. ISBN   978-1-61316-050-3
  32. ↑ Fusilli, Jim (2016). Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music-Themed Noir. Three Rooms Press. ISBN   978-1941110454.
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