Richard J Cass Books in Order

Richard J. Cass grew up around Boston and has made the city a lasting part of his crime fiction. He attended Boston Latin School, graduated from Colby College in Maine, and later earned a graduate degree in writing from the University of New Hampshire.

His road to fiction did not begin with a publishing job. Cass worked as a technical writing and training consultant before turning his attention to writing full-time, and that practical background shows in his interest in work, institutions, and the ways people get caught in systems bigger than themselves.

He has also studied with Thomas Williams Jr., Joseph Monninger, Ernest Hebert, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Molly Gloss. Those years of classes, workshops, and reading helped build a wide base, but his novels keep their feet on the street.

Cass is best known for the Elder Darrow mysteries, a Boston-set series built around a recovering alcoholic who buys a rough bar and hopes to turn it into a jazz club. The first published novel, Solo Act, follows Elder as he questions the apparent suicide of jazz singer Alison Somers. It was a finalist for the 2017 Maine Literary Award in Crime Fiction.

Then came the prequel, In Solo Time.

That book takes Elder back to the earliest days of the Esposito, when a murdered guitarist turns his new bar into the center of a dangerous case. In Solo Time won the 2018 Maine Literary Award in Crime Fiction. Later books, including Burton's Solo, Last Call at the Esposito, Sweetie Bogan's Sorrow, and Mickey’s Mayhem, widen the circle around Elder, Boston homicide detective Dan Burton, and the people tied to the bar.

The series has jazz in its bones, but the mysteries are also about sobriety, friendship, class, loyalty, and the uneasy overlap between old Boston money, neighborhood crime, and ordinary people trying to hold on. Elder comes from a privileged family but is rarely comfortable in that world. Burton brings a working-class perspective and police experience, and their friendship gives the books much of their pull.

The bar is never just a backdrop.

Cass has also written The Last Altruist, a Maine-set thriller about a former Army investigator drawn into a murder case involving a stationery-shop owner and her vulnerable son. The novel was shortlisted for the 2023 Maine Literary Award in Crime Fiction and received the Nancy Pearl Librarian’s Prize for Genre Fiction. His short-story collection is Gleam of Bone.

His shorter fiction and nonfiction have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Playboy, Gray’s Sporting Journal, ZZYZVA, Tough, and Best Short Stories of the American West. His short work has also received prizes from Redbook, Writers’ Digest, and Playboy.

Cass lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He has taught writing and continues to take part in conversations about crime fiction, essays, and the everyday mechanics of telling a good story.