I’ve been absent from the blog for several days now, as you may have noticed. The explanation has nothing to do with mysteries or crime fiction or paperback covers, but I’d like to offer one anyway.

   It was a week ago that Evelyn Ahlberg died. She and my wife Judy taught math together at the University of Connecticut’s Hartford branch for over 30 years, and over that time she and her husband Don had become our very close friends.

   In her early 70s, Evelyn had retired but had come back to teach one course a semester.

   She died very suddenly, struck down by previously undiscovered heart problem while swimming. Judy and I received the news last Monday while eating dinner out. Since then we’ve been helping Don contact her friends and people she knew, which is redundant, because everyone she knew became a friend quickly.

   We’ll miss her tremendously. We already do.