Mark Arsenault is a Shamus-nominated mystery writer, a journalist, a runner, hiker, reader, political junkie and eBay fanatic, cursed with an incurable itch to collect memorabilia from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Like his fictional characters, he likes the taste of aspirin and the smell of skunk, and doesn’t mind the sound of fingernails on the blackboard.

His new novel, LOOT THE MOON, will be released October 13 by St. Martin’s Press. It’s the second book in the Billy Povich series that began with GRAVEWRITER, a noir thriller praised for a fusion of suspense, humor and human tenderness.

The Povich family—three generations of men stumbling through life in an apartment above a funeral home—return in Billy’s next adventure, LOOT THE MOON. Billy is called upon to investigate the assassination of a prominent judge, a case in which nothing is as it first seems.

Arsenault’s debut novel, SPIKED, (2003, Poisoned Pen Press) was a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best First Mystery. The story was drawn from his experience as a journalist writing about heroin addicts who lived desperate lives of crime, love and addiction beneath a railroad bridge in Lowell, Massachusetts.

His follow-up novel, SPEAK ILL OF THE LIVING, (2005, Poisoned Pen Press) was inspired by two years of jailhouse interviews inside “Supermax,” Rhode Island’s most secure prison, which holds the most dangerous inmates in the state.

With 20 years of experience as a print reporter, Arsenault is one of those weird cranks who still prefers his news on paper. His prison interviews in Rhode Island became a highly controversial Providence Journal series entitled “Into Another World.” He also spent a year covering the aftermath of the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people. He’s now a free-lance journalist who writes frequently for The Boston Globe.

Arsenault is a member of the Mystery Writers of America.

When he’s not at his keyboard, you might find him backpacking up the side of a mountain.

He lives in Southeastern Massachusetts with his wife, Jennifer Levitz.