Many fiction writers have long been urged to get out of their ivory towers and research the real world for their material. Robert Boris Riskin did better than that. He went out and actually worked for a living. A Brooklyn native, he traveled the world. He supported himself and family at a variety of jobs—from dishwasher to factory worker, busboy to a hawker of low-price, high-fashion garments for women—all the while experiencing firsthand the stuff of the human condition that feeds his writing.

Riskin’s work has appeared over the years in a variety of literary magazines, including The New Yorker. Long an avid reader of mystery-thrillers, he decided to try his hand at it. The crackling results were Scrambled Eggs and Deadly Bones which introduced a salty, new, reluctant sleuth and Shakespeare maven, called Jake Wanderman.

Riskin now lives and writes in Sag Harbor, at the eastern end of New York’s Long Island, where, he says, the bay and ocean are close enough to touch, and the air is alive with stories.