Peter Blauner

Peter Blauner (born October 29, 1959) is an American author and journalist.

Blauner has written six novels, including Slow Motion Riot, which won the 1992 Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was named an International Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement. His novel The Intruder was a New York Times bestseller and a bestseller in England as well.

He considers himself to be not so much a thriller writer as a "social novelist," often writing about the cost of city living on the human soul.

Early career

Blauner's early literary influences ranged from writers like Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Philip Roth to film directors like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, and Werner Herzog. He studied at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and won the Paul Horgan prize for best short fiction by a student. He 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.

In 1982, Blauner began working as an intern at New York magazine. He worked his way up from the research department and eventually became a staff writer for the magazine. His subjects came largely from the dark side of city life.

Blauner also was the 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.

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. It won the Edgar award, and named an "International Book of the Year" in the Times Literary Supplement by Patricia Highsmith.

Blauner then spent several years researching a novel about Atlantic City, New Jersey. Casino Moon was published in 1994. 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 was a New York Times bestseller and a bestseller in England.

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.

Blauner's next novel The Last Good Day, was published in 2003. It concerned the effect of social change on individual lives, and reflected how one town outside New York City reacted to the events of 9/11.

Slipping Into Darkness was published by Little Brown in 2006.

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. Mostly recently, he served as a co-executive producer of Law & Order: SVU, where he was the writer of the show's 300th episode, "Manhattan Vigil" and the Edgar-nominated co-writer of the episode "Legitimate Rape".

Novels

• 1991 - Slow Motion Riot
• 1994 - Casino Moon
• 1996 - The Intruder
• 1999 - Man of the Hour
• 2003 - The Last Good Day
• 2006 - Slipping Into Darkness

Short stories

• "Going, Going, Gone," The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. Selected Shorts from Symphony Space

• "The Consultant," Wall Street Noir, 2007

• "Thank God for Charlie," The Rich and The Dead, 2011

• "The Chair," Kwik Krimes, 2013

• "The Final Testament," Mysterious Press, 2013

External links

• Peter Blauner's website