Now I earn my living by indulging my passion. It is also astonishingly varied. My readers range from preteens to nonagenarians, from Germans to Swedes to Australians, from dog fanciers who read little fiction except mine to mystery fans who do not necessarily own or even like dogs. There is nothing elitist about my writing. Therein lies my greatest pleasure.
Mystery writing is also a wonderfully slothful occupation.
The empirical research I used to do was a great nuisance. Human subjects, once recruited, had to be persuaded to give informed consent. These days, I invent my human subjects and murder them with impunity. In mystery writing, it is not only good, but necessary, to be a dilettante. Research now means studying up on Napoleon, Clare Booth Luce, arsenic, tattooing, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the Cadillac limousine custom-built for the pampered show dogs of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge.