LITERATURE + LECTURES

Wednesday, May 30 at 6:30pm, Murder by the Book presents Bruce DeSilva. Bruce DeSilva will sign and discuss Cliff Walk (Forge; $24.99).

Prostitution has been legal in Rhode Island for more than a decade; Liam Mulligan, an old-school investigative reporter at dying Providence newspaper, suspects the governor has been taking payoffs to keep it that way. But this isn't the only story making headlines...a child's severed arm is discovered in a pile of garbage at a pig farm. Then the body of an internet pornographer is found sprawled on the rocks at the base of Newport's famous Cliff Walk.

At first, the killings seem random, but as Mulligan keeps digging into the state's thriving sex business, strange connections emerge. Promised free sex with hookers if he minds his own business--and a beating if he doesn't--Mulligan enlists Thanks-Dad, the newspaper publisher's son, and Attila the Nun, the state's colorful Attorney General, in his quest for the truth. What Mulligan learns will lead him to question his beliefs about sexual morality, shake his tenuous religious faith, and leave him wondering who his real friends are.

Bruce DeSilva worked as a journalist for 40 years before retiring to write crime novels full time. At the Associated Press, he served as the writing coach, responsible for training the wire service's reporters and editors worldwide. Previously, he directed an elite AP department devoted to investigative reporting and other special projects. Earlier in his career, he worked as an investigative reporter and an editor at The Hartford Courant and The Providence Journal.

Stories edited by DeSilva have won virtually every major journalism prize including the Polk Award (twice), the Livingston (twice), the ASNE, and the Batten Medal. He also edited two Pulitzer finalists and helped edit a Pulitzer winner.

He has worked as a consultant on writing and editing at more than 50 newspapers including The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News, and he has been a sought-after speaker at professional journalism gatherings including the National Writers Workshops and the Nieman Foundation. His reviews of crime novels have appeared in The New York Times book review section and continue to be published occasionally by The Associated Press.

His critically acclaimed first novel, Rogue Island, is the winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

He and his wife Patricia Smith, an award-winning poet, live in Howell, NJ, with their granddaughter Mikaila and an enormous Bernese Mountain Dog named Brady.