Interview with Otto Penzler at Crime Fiction Lover
Crime Fiction Lover has a great interview up with Otto Penzler. Here's an excerpt:
First off, can you tell us a bit about why you became interested in mystery in the first place, and what you love most about it?
Having been an English major at the University of Michigan, I just wanted to read light, undemanding books just for the fun of it when I came back to New York, so I started to read detective fiction, which I hadn’t done when I was younger. When I came across Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M Cain, and others, I soon learned that the best mystery writers had as much depth and literary style as mainstream fiction writers did. At the same time, I began to collect first editions of mystery fiction, which was extremely affordable back then since there was little competition for books. I amassed a sizable library pretty quickly, feeding my reading habit – three or four books a week.
You can read the rest of the interview here. It's a good one.
