Amazon.com: Where are you from? How--if at all--has your sense of place colored your  writing?

J.J.: I was born in Detroit, went to school there, lived much of my childhood in northern Michigan,       around Traverse City. For the last thirty years I've lived in Montana. Obviously, all this had an impact: my latest novel, GO BY GO, is based on the infamous murder of labor organizer Frank Little, in Butte, in 1917. In Detroit I had intimate contact with labor unions and their history. In Montana, the murder of Frank Little is still big news.

Amazon.com: When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?

J.J.: I started writing in college, at Wayne State University. I always thought I would write, but I  wasn't sure what that meant. Meeting Jim Harrison -- we lived in the same little town in upstate Michigan in the early 60s -- made it seem that it was at least possible to be a writer. By the time I  got to Montana, I'd convinced myself.

Amazon.com: Who or what has influenced your writing, and in what way? What books have most influenced your life?

J.J.: Jim Harrison, as mentioned above. Also, John Ingwersen (a not very well-known poet), Bill              Kittredge, David Morrell, Tracy Kidder, Stuart Dybek, Ray Carver and on and on ... they all encouraged me, read what I wrote. But before that, it was little blue-haired old ladies who volunteered to run a small-town library, open one day a week. They started me on fairy tales, Robin Hood, King Arthur, then Alice in Wonderland. Pretty soon I went on my own to Dickens, Tolstoy, Hemingway, and before long, Nabokov. Sherlock Holmes impressed me. So did Pudd'nhead  Wilson and Huck. Georges Simenon has had a great effect.

Amazon.com: What is the most romantic book you've ever read? The scariest? The funniest?

J.J.: A. Lolita B. Books don't scare me. C. Probably Thurber's stories, but on the same level, Fran        Lebowitz, Woody Allen, Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse.

Amazon.com: What music, if any, most inspires you to write? What do you like to listen to while writing?

J.J.: Jazz, especially lately, John Surman's. I've been listening to Booker Ervin's mid-60s sextet,  with Jaki Byard. Also, Bach's cello suites, especially as played by Janos Starker or Mstislav Rostropovich. Also, anything by Charlie Haden, especially his Quartet West.

Amazon.com: What are you reading now? What CD is currently in your stereo?

J.J.: I just finished "The Loser", by Austrian novelist, Thomas Bernhard. Very great. I've started on his "Extinction." I'm listening to Rosalyn Tureck's "Johann Sebastian Bach -- The Great Solo Works", VAIA 1041. I play it over and over. Very good to write to. I need to get her version in this series of the Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Amazon.com: What are you working on?

J.J.: New novel, LA DONNA DETROIT, the eighth installment in my detective series, set in Detroit, with police detective Sgt. "Fang" Mulheisen. It's coming along well. Mafia boss Humphrey DiEbola is laying a very deep plot.

Amazon.com: Use this space to write about whatever you wish.

J.J.: I am interested in the impact of the net on writing, reading, publishing and selling books. Perhaps the greatest impact will be on reading, but that will be the least discernible effect in the near term. We shall see.