Bruce Paley is a native New Yorker who came to London in 1986 on a two week holiday that has since stretched into the present day, 26 years and counting. He and his partner, the cartoonist Carol Swain, divide their time between Hampstead, London, where they run a bookstall in the Hampstead Community Centre (78 Hampstead High Street, London NW3 1RE; hampsteadbooks@aol.com) during the summer months, and Pembrokeshire, Wales, where they enjoy the wonderful wildlife and tranquility of the Welsh coastline and countryside and work on their own projects. Bruce and Carol collaborated on the graphic novel Giraffes in my Hair: A Rock'n'Roll Life (Fantagraphics), which recounts Bruce's adventures as a carefree, Kerouac-loving hippie in the 1960s, through to his later involvement in the heroin-soaked downtown New York punk scene of the 1970s, a journey that mirrors the optimism of the 60s replaced by the pessimism of the 70s. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with more than one reviewer calling it the best graphic novel of the year, while USA Today predicted that it would be turned into a film (though we're still waiting for that phone call!). French and Spanish translations of "Giraffes" have also been published. Bruce's previous book, Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth (Headline; rights now owned by the author), was recently named the best book ever written on that tireless subject by the editors of the Journal of the Whitechapel Society, an organisation dedicated to all things Jack the Ripper. Besides setting out in considerable detail Bruce's original theory that Jack the Ripper was one Joseph Barnett, the boyfriend of the last victim, Mary Kelly, the book has been cited for it's extraordinarily vivid evocation of Victorian London and the East End. As Colin Wilson wrote in his foreword to the book, "If I had to recommend a single book on Jack the Ripper to someone who knew nothing of the subject, I would unhesitatingly choose this one. Bruce Paley has captured the atmosphere of Whitechapel at the time of the murders - and indeed, of London in the late 19th century - with a sense of living reality that no other write on the case has achieved." More recently, Bruce has finished a London-set crime novel entitled A Dog to Kick, featuring his creation DCI Richard Greene, who, by all appearances, has a model life. A handsome former amateur police boxing champion, he has the respect of his peers and is engaged to be married, though he has negelected to tell his devoutly religious father that his fiancee is a non-Jew. But when the body of a murdered woman is found in a north London cemetery and an eccentric local reporter receives a cryptic note purportedly from the killer, Greene's life is thrown into chaos - not only does he find himself on the trail of a cunning serial killer, but in the midst of it all a family crisis compels Greene to re-examine his Jewish identity. This is a tense, lively and intriguing thriller whose characters are all too human, and things are not always as they seem. A Dog to Kick is now exclusively available on Kindle at the bargain price of $0.99 or 77p. In 2012, Bruce became the recipient of a grant from Literature Wales to complete his latest book, a zany satirical novel entitled The Obrovsky Theatre Co. of Blaznivyzeme, which recounts the efforts of a troupe of dwarves to mount a production of Hamlet in a fictitious Eastern European country undergoing a difficult transition from communism to capitalism. Starring in the lead role is an unrepentant, hard drinking, drug abusing, womanising dwarf known in his country as the Miniature Marlon Brando, who may or may or may not be washed up. Unless scooped up by a publisher, Obrovsky will also appear on Kindle at some point in 2013. Among many jobs, Bruce has worked as a private detective, a horse wrangler, comic shop owner, and vendor at Shea Stadium, where he got to see The Beatles. The first story he ever wrote, entitle Smileaway, was published in the July 1972 issue of Amazing Science Fiction, and he has also contributed articles on music and popular culture to journals such as the Village Voice, the Soho Weekly News, Crawdaddy, and Trouser Press in the States, and Uncut, Classic Rock and the Hampstead Village Voice in the UK. He is also a keen photographer and has had his work exhibited in New York and elsewhere. Fans of Carol Swain, btw, might be interested to know that she has just completed a (brilliant, if I say so myself) new graphic novel, Gast, and is open to publishing offers.