Benjamin Justice

Created by John Morgan Wilson

Former prize-winning reporter BENJAMIN JUSTICE used to cover the LA crime beat, but now he scrambles for a living, writing press releases and the like — and even stooping to a civil service job — while drinking too much and contemplating the loss of his reputation, his job, and his Pulitzer.

It seems that Ben was caught being a little too creative with the facts in a highly-regarded series on the effect of AIDS on two men, one taking care of the other as he was dying. Turns out the men he wrote about didn’t really exist. In fact, the series was actually a slightly fictionalized version of the dying days of Ben’s own lover, and that that’s why the writing had been so powerful. (But this was not made public, at least as far in the series as I’ve gotten, so as far as everyone else is concerned, they still think he made up the story.)

Ben’s debut, the Edgar Award winning Simple Justice (1996), and in fact, the whole series, have received some very good reviews. No, he’s not really a private eye, per se, but one of those trouble-prone amateurs whose approach to investigating is anything but amateur.

It’s an injustice, really, that ten years on, this series was already forgotten, with several of the books not released as ebooks–or even paperback. They deserved better.

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Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Jan for putting me straight, so to speak.

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