Jeffrey Gusfield

Jeffrey Gusfield was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1948, and grew up in Highland Park. A fine art dealer for 35 years, he has also been one of the more dedicated Capone-era researchers in Chicago for several decades. Deadly Valentines is his first book and a culmination of a lifetime of hunting and digging into every conceivable corner looking for the elusive Jack McGurn and the outrageous Louise Rolfe. Jeffrey was taught his first lessons about writing from his cousin, Mackinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize winner for Andersonville and creator of the epic poem that Sherwood Anderson adapted for the Oscar-winning Best Years Of Our Lives. Jeffrey is passionate about his short stories and chose to write Deadly Valentines in the contemporary present tense. "After all of these years of trying to know Jack and Louise, finding out any personal details about them was always such a triumph, and it is that element which naturally pulled me to present tense for intimacy and immediacy."