• Forgiveness is a theme that runs through much of my fiction, and usually I don’t recognize the theme until a story is well underway. “Unlawful Contact” is the first story I ever wrote that began with a theme. I asked myself, “Is it possible to forgive the unforgivable?” and set up a situation in which a character wishes to do just that.
My story’s inclusion in a book of mysteries was, at first, bewildering to me. Otto Penzler, the series editor, assured me that the story fit the requirements because it involved a crime. As I reread the story myself I recognized not one but two crimes. The brother’s act is a crime in a formal sense; the sister’s desire to forgive him is, in the eyes of her family, a messier, even less comprehensible crime — as are all crimes of the heart.