Goodreads asked Laurien Berenson:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Laurien Berenson When my son was young I had a babysitter who came to my house four hours a day to watch him so that I could work. The babysitter was a young black man who was a high school graduate, saving money so he could go to college. About four months after he started working for me, he was murdered in the neighboring town where he lived.

The police came to question me because he had in his possession a check I'd written to him, that was for several hundred dollars. The first thing they said was, "We assume he was selling drugs and you must have been buying so you might as well tell us all about it." (!!)

Nothing I said was ever able to convince the authorities that a young black man who'd been killed did not die a drug-related death. Or maybe they didn't want to be bothered investigating what really happened so they were happy to make it appear that his death was somehow his own fault.

I knew the young man quite well and I also knew his family. We were all horrified by the lack of interest the police showed in the crime. Though this happened many years ago, I've always regretted that I didn't have Melanie Travis's detecting skills and wasn't able to find out what had truly happened to him.

flag