Rich Thompson is really just an honorary Canadian, living as he does just across the 49^th parallel, in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, a.k.a. St Paul. He has a degree in civil engineering, with distinction, and is a registered professional engineer, but most people concede that it hasn’t hurt his writing. At various times he has also been a genuine starving artist, a cement finisher, a carpenter, a folksinger and maker of stringed instruments, a short order cook, a petty officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, a general contractor, and a boat builder.

Richard’s debut novel, Fiddle Game, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in January of this year. He has written three other unpublished novels and about three dozen short stories. Three stories were sold to obscure magazines that almost immediately went out of business. One, “Transference,” was sold to Black Petals Press, which paid real money for it but does not appear to have ever published it. Another won second place in the annual Tamarak competition of the Minnesota Monthly, which publishes only the first-place winners. And a few actually made it onto the printed page. Fiddle Game, grew directly out of the short story “Numbers Game,” which won a Bony Pete award at Bloody Words in 2000.

Rich is a long-time member and former officer of the Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime and has been a panelist and panel moderator at several Bouchercon, Bloody Words, and Left Coast Crime conventions. He lives with his wife of 45 years, Caroline, and two cats, a semi-feral stray named Nikita and a Norwegian forest cat named Charlie. He has two adult daughters, of whom he is immoderately proud.

Selected Bibliography
The Herman Jackson Bail Bondsman Mysteries:
Fiddle Game. Poisoned Pen Press, 2008

Fiddle Game
A bail bondsman accepts a priceless violin as security on a bond and is suddenly plunged into a world of high-stakes con games, crooked cops, urban Gypsies, and murder.

 

Short stories:
“Numbers Game” in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, July 2002, and Bloody Words, The Anthology, 2003
“War Story” in Whistling Shade Literary Review, Fall 2005
“The Used Idea Salesman” in Zahir Unforgettable Tales, Winter 2003

Awards:
Runner-up, Minnesota Monthly Tamarak Award, 1996, for “The Entropy Man”
Winner, Boney Pete Award at Bloody Words II, 2000, for “Numbers Game”
Shortlisted, CWA Debut Dagger Award, 2006, for Fiddle Game.

Website:
www.fiddlegame.com

Email:
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