NYMysteries Feb. 23

KGB is at 85 East 4th Street. Its speakeasy bar, the Red Room, is squashed into the second floor up a steep flight of stairs that would have given Alfred Hitchcock ideas for another Psycho sequel. I went to an open mike session sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. Nervous? Yes. Excited? Yeeees. I read the first chapter of my revised version of Graphic Lessons and received an enthusiastic response. KGB features nightly performances of writers of different genres: fiction writers, mystery writers, trumpet writers. (What’s that?) Monday night is poetry night. The atmosphere is prohibition cozy: dark, crowded with lots of chairs and a bar that runs one side of the room.  It’s a rainy fall or winter night atmosphere twelve months of the year.

 

 

 

KGB
KGB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn’t it fun to surprise friends with a restaurant that’s different in design but great in what counts: delicious food, efficient and friendly service. IchiUmi at 32nd Street and Fifth fits the bill. Its buffet runs for miles and don’t forget desserts and other goodies on the other side of the restaurant. 

IchiUmi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IchiUmi

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?