The Reporter

IN THE FIFTH INSTALLMENT IN HIS MYSTERY SERIES, PARKS sends investigative reporter Carter Ross digging into mob connections after a strange disease starts ravaging a neighborhood. Park draws on his 20 years in journalism, most recently reporting for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, to offer an insider’s view of a newsroom and its city beat. The series is grounded in the local scene—with Newark streets and landmarks as the backdrop and union toughs, slumlords and Greek diner bosses as minor characters—and Parks mixes serious suspense with an edgy humor, “a Sopranos-worthy ragout of high drama and low comedy,” according to one reviewer. It was Parks’ coverage of the Newark streets that sparked the series: In 2004 he covered a quadruple homicide that provided the real-life launching point for Ross, a street-smart character who shares Parks’ looks, style and worldview. Although Parks admits his protagonist is an idealized version of himself, he says he does imagine Ross as a distinct character. “I’ll have him do things I’d never do to myself,” says Parks. “Since my wife [Melissa Taylor ’96] is an alum who also reads DAM, I should state explicitly that includes having a girlfriend whom he impreg- nates.” He is the only author to have won the Shamus (for best first private eye novel), Nero (for best American mystery) and Lefty (for best humorous mystery) awards. (For a taste of that humor—including photos from his night out in San Francisco with his Shamus—go to bradparksbooks.com

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Parks started reporting at age 14, when he saw an ad for a local sports- writer for The Ridgefield (Connecticut) Press. “I always say I got into writ- ing for the money and the sex,” he says. The job paid 50 cents per column inch—more than he’d make babysitting—and involved covering the local girls basketball team. It also launched his writing career. While in Hanover he wrote for The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Life, The Sports Weekly (which he started out of his dorm room), The New York Times and The Boston Globe. After graduation he joined The Washington Post as the youngest reporter in the newsroom before moving on to The Star-Ledger. Parks left newspapers in 2008 and published his first Carter Ross mystery in 2009. Although he hasn’t mapped out Ross’ next thriller—“While I was a geography major at Dartmouth, it turns out I’m terrible with maps”—Parks promises any resem- blance between a political character who offers a rambling apologia for some misdeed and the current New Jersey governor will be just a coincidence.