The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared: A Short Story

In 1938 sixteen-year-old Jake Foreman spends his free time with his friend Barney Teitleman in Lawndale, a prosperous Jewish community on Chicago’s near West Side.

Jake develops a crush on Miriam Hirsch, an actress in the Yiddish theater who lives at the Teitleman’s boarding house. But Miriam only has eyes for Skull, who might or might not be a gangster. Then one day she disappears and doesn't come back.

THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED was the first short story I wrote. Little did I know then that the story would become the “prequel” to my Ellie Foreman series. Or that the Ellie Foreman series would be the prequel to my Georgia Davis series.

The story, which won the Bouchercon short story contest in 1999, was later published in ANTHOLOGY TODAY, and in FUTURES MAGAZINE. It is available in Nice Girl Does Noir, War, Spies & Bobby Sox, and on audio.