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VJ Books presents John Katzenbach!
John Katzenbach’s previous novels include two Edgar nominees, In the Heat of the Summer, adapted for the screen as “The Mean Season,” and The Shadow Man, as well as the New York Times bestseller The Traveler, Day of Reckoning, Just Cause, which was made into a movie by Warner Brothers, and State of Mind.
He has been a criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald and Miami News and a feature write for the Herald’s Tropic magazine. His work has appeared in many other newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Katzenbach takes pride in having established new standards for academic and disciplinary
restrictions and probation during his years at The Phillips Exeter
Academy. He takes even greater credit for helping to create the school’s
9th Rule. That is, when he arrived, there were eight existing rules that
could get you kicked out. He, along with two others got busted by school authorities engaging in a practice that
was clearly a violation of something – although, at that time, there
wasn’t a clear-cut and well-defined rule against it. Suffice it to say
it had something to do with significantly altered mental states. So,
without the necessary rule to give school officials the sort of petty
quasi-legal support they needed – they couldn’t kick him and his friends
out. This might have been his first lesson in unintended irony.
He graduated and went on to Bard College in the late 60's. He later took a job on the night city desk of the Trenton Times in Trenton, New Jersey for three years, covering everything from town meetings concerned with leash laws to bloody prison riots, mental
hospitals to murders until an unfortunate falling out with an editor
resulted in him being summarily fired. Despite numerous Page One stories, the editor informed him: “The only
thing you are capable of writing is the weather ear….” That’s the little
forecast that adorns the upper right hand corner on the front page –
Cloudy Today, Sunny Tomorrow. Katzenbach has successfully proven that
particular editor to be mistaken.
He went on to the Miami News, where he covered crime and punishment, won awards and gained notoriety for his reporting. After that, he quit to write his first novel, In The Heat of the Summer, which became a bestseller published in nearly 20 countries and was made into the movie The Mean Season. He returned to the Miami Herald, where he also covered crime and punishment
with similar distinction. "It was, parenthetically, a wonderful time to
be a reporter in Miami. Everything that could go wrong did. Everything
that could be bizarre was. And everything that might be outrageous,
well, outraged".
He followed up his novel with his only non-fiction book, First Born. After that, he devoted himself to fiction. Two
of his other books have been filmed – Just Cause and Hart’s War. Katzenbach finally left
newspapers in 1987 after publishing the New York Times bestseller The
Traveler – a favorite of thriller buffs worldwide and the occasional
serial killer.
Katzenbach has been published all over the world and has received many
awards. Although no longer a reporter, he still longs for the
wonderful sensation of excitement that accompanies pursuing a big story.
Now lives in Western Massachusetts, an incredibly reasonable
place except in the winter. He is married to the
writer/journalist/professor Madeleine Blais, whom he met in Trenton.
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