DD: I’m not sure about that...if I invested more. I honestly don’t know that. But an interesting thing happened just this very week. There’s a new book out on the 1980s by Patrick McMullen, and they had a launch at a gallery in Greenwich Village. They asked five writers to read something from the 1980s. Well I kinda’ fudged, but I read the long murder scene from A Season in Purgatory. I gotta tell you, I had that room silent. I mean...because I don’t just read. I act out the parts. I get into it. That’s a powerful scene.

JH: Of all the books you’ve written, what’s your favorite?

DD: Well, they’re like your kids. It’s very hard to say. I have huge affection for The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, because that really established me. But I think the very first story, An Inconvenient Woman, is a really good story.

JH: Which one was the most fun to write?

DD: I don’t know.

JH: I hear that you said you’re not going to cover any more trials.

DD: Oh yeah. That was bulls---. I think maybe I meant it at the time, but there are two I want to do badly. I’m gonna do Phil Spector. I also kind of know him. I’m going to do Robert Blake. I used to see him…I never knew him really, but I used to see him at Natalie Woods’ because they were friends—she was a great friend of my wife. And she and Blake were child actors, so they knew each other all their lives.

He’s a strange guy. When I was in Monte Carlo covering another trial, Robert Blake, through a publicist, got a hold of me and wanted me to do a jailhouse interview with him. And I declined saying that I am by nature pro prosecution and I didn’t feel right doing an interview with him. But that woman he's accused of killing was a woman who was waiting to be killed. I mean, this is not one of life’s great tragedies.

JH: I’m intrigued. No interest in the Peterson case?

DD: I don’t want to do Scott Peterson because there’s just too much out there, but it is a case that has mesmerized the nation.

It's amazing that two women vanished and were later found dead from the same town, Modesto. Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson were both from Modesto. It’s a small town with two huge crimes against women.

JH: Why doesn’t the press focus on all the other people who, like Laci, are missing. Why so much focus on Laci?

DD: Well, some cases catch on, some don’t. You know I don’t think the Dru [Sjodin] case is gonna ever be what the Laci case is, because the alleged killer is just this little, awful guy. At least Scott Peterson is good looking and a cad. He’s a cad! And he’s double dealing on everybody. He’s got the mistress, and he’s also cheating on the mistress.

JH: But now it’s my understanding that the mistress is pregnant.

DD: By somebody else. It’s a gorgeous bunch.

JH: So if you cover this and other murder trials, will novels come from them?

DD: Well, who knows? I’m getting old.

JH: It's hard for me to think of you as being old. You’re not ready for the long nap.

DD: Oh, no. No. No. No.

JH: So you’ll continue with novels on some of the cases making headlines today?

DD: Oh yeah, yeah. This Spector is a fascinating man. You know, the victim, a beautiful woman...and she was beautiful...would never shoot herself in the face. It doesn’t work that way.

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