Waltzer, Jim 1950–

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Waltzer, Jim 1950–

PERSONAL:

Born 1950.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—jmwaltzer@verizon.net.

CAREER:

Author.

WRITINGS:

Tales of South Jersey: Profiles and Personalities, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 2001.

(With Rod Kennedy) Monopoly: The Story behind the World's Best-Selling Game, Gibbs Smith (Salt Lake City, UT), 2004.

Sound of Mind (thriller novel), Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jim Waltzer published the nonfiction Tales of South Jersey: Profiles and Personalities and Monopoly: The Story behind the World's Best-Selling Game before releasing his first novel, Sound of Mind. The premise of the book is that the main character, Richard Keene, has a remarkably keen sense of hearing. It is so good that at one point it drove him nearly insane and put him in a mental hospital. After recovering and being released, Keene gets a job working as an audiometric technician. One day in his apartment building, he accidentally overhears what he believes to be a murder. When he reports what he heard to law enforcement authorities, however, they do not believe him. The problem is that the apartment where Keene thought he heard the crime in progress is occupied by a renowned doctor; moreover, the police cannot find a body or any evidence of murder. Convinced that his hearing did not lead him astray, Keene sets out to find the killer on his own in a tale that Harriet Klausner described as a "fascinating thriller" on her Web site. Booklist critic David Pitt commented that the story reminded him of the movie The Conversation, in which the sound of a murder's being committed is caught on tape, but the reviewer felt that Waltzer's take is original, "sharply plotted and engagingly written."