My heroes, teachers, and role models growing up were all either writers or their fictional creations. My sense of adventure derives from reading The Three Musketeers, Cyrano de Bergerac and Ian Flemings' James Bond. My mind was trained in the deadliest arts of logic by the examples of such famous fictional detectives as Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. My heart was educated by reading Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Cervante's Don Quixote.

I fear that, like the hero of this last book, my brain became fried from all my reading, for as an adult I conceived the strangest notion, to set off in quest of adventure through the pages of the past, solving ancient mysteries in high detective style, going wherever my heart and my imagination led me. I therefore invented for myself an entirely novel profession, that of historical detective. Over the last ten years I have tackled a number of famous and fascinating mysteries, with some success. I have written popular books (as yet unpublished) and scholarly articles (better record here) on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on the historical basis of Greek myths such as the Amazons and the Travels of Hercules.

My goal as a writer is to create non-fiction that is as exciting and entertaining as fiction. I am currently investigating perhaps the most mysterious and arcane subject of all, one that chills even this detective-writer's blood: MARKETING. I also write the occasional short story.

L.A. River