Larry Karp

Larry Karp is a mystery novelist, a former physician, and a collector-restorer of antique music boxes. What he is not, to his eternal frustration, is a musician - can't read music, write it, play it. But at least he can listen, and for many years, his favorite musical genre has been ragtime.

Larry used his personal experience to write a music box mystery series (The Music Box Murders, Scamming the Birdman, and The Midnight Special), and the medical-ethics historical, First, Do No Harm. Along the way, he became so interested in the unexplained fact that John Stark saw fit to give Scott Joplin a royalties contract for Maple Leaf Rag that he decided to write the matter up as historical fiction. He had such a good time pestering the staff at Sedalia's Carnegie Library, and attending ragtime festivals in the name of doing research, that he decided to expand The Ragtime Kid into a mystery trilogy. The second book, tentatively titled The King of Ragtime is scheduled for publication in October, 2008.