Michael Z. Lewin (US crime writer) Add a review

Michael Zinn Lewin (born 1942 in Springfield, Massachusetts) is an American writer of mystery fiction perhaps best known for his series about Albert Samson, a low-keyed, non-hardboiled private detective who plies his trade in Indianapolis, Indiana. Samson's was arguably the first truly regional series for a private-eye, beginning with Ask the Right Question, published in 1971.

Lewin himself grew up in Indianapolis, but after graduating from Harvard University and living for a few years in Bridgeport, Connecticut and then New York City, he moved to England where he has lived since 1971. However, much of his fiction continues to be set in Indianapolis, including a second series about Leroy Powder, a confrontational Indy police officer who also sometimes appears in the Samson novels. Samson and Powder also feature in short stories. The Samson and Powder novels and stories have been widely praised.^{[by whom?]}

Another series is set in Bath, Somerset in England, where Lewin now lives. This features the Lunghis who run their detective agency as a family business. There are three novels and several short stories about them.

Lewin has also written a number of stand-alone novels. Some have been set in Indianapolis and others elsewhere. One novel, Confessions of a Discontented Deity, is even set largely in Heaven. A satire, it is one of a number of Lewin's works that break from traditional genre fiction. Other examples are Rover's Tales (short stories that view humanity from below, compared to Deity's view from above), Cutting Loose (a historical novel that moves from Indiana to London in the 19th century), Men Like Us (whose central character is an American from Indiana trying to find redemption in London), and Whatever It Takes, a short dystopian novel which has also been viewed by some as satire.

Lewin is the son of Leonard C. Lewin, author of the 1967 bestselling satire The Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. Leonard C. Lewin also wrote as L. L. Case.

His sister is Julie E. Lewin, a nationally known advocate on animal issues and the author of highly influential "Get Political for Animals and Win the Laws They Need."