Be a witness at the Cortez Public Library as Four Corners crime writers Chuck Greaves, Scott Graham and Paul Berkowitz lead a lively panel discussion, moderated by Anne Benson, on Monday, Feb. 5 at 6 p.m.
According to the library, you will find out how they became accomplished, published and award-winning writers of crime and mystery. Bring questions and delve into the mysteries of these three authors who choose to live, write and enjoy our amazing corner of the world.
You will witness and experience unexpected twists, intrigue, romance, kidnappings, politics, scandals, horse racing, true crime and not-so-true crime, government corruption, Native American lore, Southwest landscapes.
Chuck Greaves wanted to write novels, but law school and 25 years of trial work in Los Angeles intervened. Since retiring from practice in 2006, he has authored five crime novels, most recently “Tom and Lucky” (Bloomsbury), a Wall Street Journal “Best Books of 2015” selection and a finalist for the 2016 Harper Lee Prize. Greaves has been a finalist for most of the major awards in crime fiction including the Shamus, Macavity, Lefty, and Audie, as well as the New Mexico-Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado Book Awards. He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and writes the monthly “Prose and Cons” column for the Four Corners Free Press, sharing book review duties with Durango’s Scott Graham. He and his wife, Lynda, own the Stark Raven Vineyard in beautiful McElmo Canyon.
Scott Graham, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, is the author of “Canyon Sacrifice,” “Mountain Rampage,” and “Yellowstone Standoff” –books one through three in the National Park Mystery Series for Torrey House Press. “Yosemite Fall,” book four in the series, will be released in June. He also wrote the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, “Extreme Kids.” Like most visitors to America’s first national park, Graham was awestruck by Yellowstone as a child. His fascination with the park has continued in the years since, with numerous visits to Yellowstone’s geyser- and wildlife-filled front country and its incomparable wilderness. He is an avid outdoorsman and amateur archaeologist who enjoys mountaineering, skiing, hunting, rock climbing, and whitewater rafting with his wife, who is an emergency physician, and their two sons, in Durango.
Paul Berkowitz retired after a 33-year career in law enforcement, primarily with the National Park Service. Berkowitz was probably most distinguished by his role as a whistleblower, reporting, writing and testifying before a Congressional subcommittee about government corruption. Some of those events and activities are chronicled in his award-winning book “The Case of the Indian Trader: Billy Malone and the National Park Service Investigation at Hubbell Trading Post” (University of New Mexico Press, 2011). His most recent book, “Legacy of the Yosemite Mafia,” explores these issues further, presenting details of previously secret documents, witness statement, and testimony, to reveal the longstanding nature of problems in the park service and how the failure to confront these issues has compromised its ability to achieve its conservation mission. Berkowitz is the winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction (Mountain West), and the 2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Best Non-fiction.
Moderator Anne Benson, a transplant to the Four Corners, most recently from Colorado’s Front Range, had a marvelous time reading selections from these three authors – revisiting a few sites that she explored as an employee of Great Old Broads for Wilderness and visiting many more places on the page that are now on her bucket list.
