Peter J. Kraus

Peter J. Kraus was born in Germany in 1941. At age nine, his family took him to Los Angeles, California, not aware that the move would turn him into an Übercalifornian. Sun, surf, rock and roll and cars and cars and cars took over Peter's life, the study of Economics simply served to place check marks in boxes that asked about college and degrees. Peter spent many years in Germany, perfecting the native tongue and racing cars, returned to California with his family (wife Jenny, sons Mike and Pat) and fulfilled a life-long dream: FM jock in Santa Barbara for the joy of playing music and broadcast journalist for a number of German national radio networks and private stations for the money.

The broadcast gig has been going on for thirty-plus years now, supplemented by three well-received books on American music (in German) in the nineties, a couple of school books for German English students together with bilingual son Mike, and a number of crime novels, one of which was a finalist for the prestigious Glauser Crime Fiction Award.

Rapacity is Peter's first novel in English. About time, too.