...and the kinds of women they have for friends, take crap from anybody, not even me, and they have a tendency to gag when the talk turns to "sharing feelings."

Crescent Blues: Do you ever get compliments from readers on how "authentic" a woman Peggy is?

M. D. Lake: Peggy isn't an authentic woman, she's an authentic fictional character. She'd be inauthentic if she suddenly started flying or speaking classical Greek. At mystery conventions or signings, women sometimes come up to me and express surprise that I'm a man.

The first time it happened, I asked the woman if she was disappointed and she said, "No! I can hardly wait to tell my sister, who loves your books too." I've heard of women who, when they discovered that I was a man, felt "tricked" and vowed never to read another of my books. Maybe they're afraid of getting boy germs from them, I don't know.

Ignorance annoys me; great ignorance annoys me greatly. You tell me what Woman is, with a capital "W" -- or Man, with a capital "M" -- and I'll tell you the decade you live in, the magazines and books you've read. The woman of less than a hundred years ago would be shocked and horrified at meeting the woman of today. If the Bronte sisters could've read Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky, they would have assumed that those authors were depraved.

Crescent Blues: How do you feel about criticisms that a male writer can't really "get inside a woman's head?"

M. D. Lake: I agree completely. The only head I can get into is my own, unfortunately -- it's not always pleasant. In my writing, I don't get into a woman's head, I get into the head of a character I created, based on what any intelligent, observant and sensitive person with a little talent can know of the situation of men and women living at this time and place.

People who claim I can't write first-person female are people who believe that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice and boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails -- people, in other words, who are blinded by an ideology which relieves them of the obligation to think for themselves.

Crescent Blues: But you did choose to use a pen name, M. D. Lake, to conceal the fact that you're a man, didn't you?

M. D. Lake: I didn't choose to do it, my editor told me I had to. "Why?" I asked.

"Because," she answered, "since you write first-person female and not too many people get killed in your books, no guy is going to read them. And women won't read them if they know you're a guy. Just use your initials and you'll be okay."

"My initials are J.A.," I told her.

"Oops!" she said. "You can't use those initials because we already have an author using them, J. A. Jance, a woman who writes first-person male."

So I chose M. D. Lake, a name that came to me while walking on the shore of Medicine Lake, in Minnesota, where my wife grew up.

Crescent Blues: Was Amends for Murder, Peggy's first adventure, your first novel?

M. D. Lake: It was my first published novel. While living in Norway a long time ago, I wrote a "serious" novel. When I returned to this country, I discovered that the premise of my novel was a very successful television series, The Fugitive. I sent it to a publisher anyway, got it rejected and threw it away. It was awful, even though the premise was great.

Crescent Blues: How do you feel about Amends for Murder today?

M. D. Lake: I sometimes read around in it and I'm surprised at how good I was back then. But I think I'm better now.

Crescent Blues: How has Peggy grown over the course of the series?

M. D. Lake: She hasn't. She's had a variety of interesting experiences, made and lost friends and lovers, but she's still Peggy O'Neill. I read a lot of mysteries and, although I've heard writers say their characters grow, I've never seen any evidence of it. Maybe I don't read the right mysteries. I suspect we'd lose our readers if our characters grew, just as MacDonald's would lose its customers if they started serving pheasant under glass -- or Spam in aspic -- instead of hamburgers.

Crescent Blues: Even in a fully realized and well-drawn mystery series such as the Peggy O'Neill series, there are elements that strain plausibility. For example, there are an awful lot of murders on her campus. How do you maintain the willing suspension of disbelief?

M. D. Lake: I don't. Readers do, so you'd better ask them. And while you're at it, ask them how they swallow the fact that Peggy, Kinsey, V. I., Marlowe, Hammer and all the other protagonists who speak in the first person can tell such good stories, but they still grub along as lowly cops and PIs. Who are they talking to? How can they recall complete conversations, and why do they write them down?

At the end of each Sue Grafton novel, Kinsey writes, "Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Milhone," and then presumably tucks her copy of the report in a file. Then what happens? Does Grafton sneak into Kinsey's office late at night and lift the report -- complete with dialogue, description and suspense -- out of Kinsey's file and publish it under her own name? You'd think Kinsey would catch on and sue Sue.

Then there are all those "cozy" mysteries featuring amateur sleuths who solve murder after murder in their quiet little neighborhoods and towns. Even the tough PI novels require suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader, since PIs in real life rarely get involved in murder and almost never carry guns. In my opinion, a PI is just an amateur with a license. And you'll notice that in most PI novels, we're never told how the PI got the license. Chances are, the author doesn't know, just simply says he or she has a license. And readers don't care, if the story is good enough.

Crescent Blues: But even in the world of cozy mysteries, it seems unlikely that a bright, personable woman such as Peggy wouldn't advance further in the campus hierarchy.

M. D. Lake: It seems unlikely to me that somebody who spins a story as brilliantly as Kinsey Milhone would continue working as a PI, getting shot at, blown up and banged up week after week, for peanuts. I know that if I could write -- or speak, or whatever it is she's doing -- as well as Peggy O'Neill, I wouldn't go on being a campus cop. But, don't forget that, while I've been writing Peggy O'Neill mysteries for ten years, the amount of time that's passed from the first one to the present is only a couple of years.

Furthermore, Peggy's been offered chances to advance and has turned them down. Although Regan Metcalf, the woman who inspired the creation of Peggy, is now a lieutenant, I know cops -- both campus and city cops -- who've refused to advance beyond patrolman/woman because they like being on the street and don't want the hassle of doing a lot of administrative and personnel work indoors.

Crescent Blues: Do you have a favorite among your books?

M. D. Lake: Every time I pick one up and start reading it, I think it's my favorite. But I guess...

M. D. Lake(continued)