A year ago, Peter Maas died. M-a-a-s. I did not rejoice, but I thought his passing would make my life less complicated, because for as long as I’ve been a writer I’ve been confused with Peter Maas (one “s”, not two), who wrote “Serpico”, “The Valachi Papers” and a number of other books that had, for the most part, mafia themes. I’ve written about this dilemma before—click here for my Slate story on the topic—so I won’t go into the details. But I will mention that The New York Times Magazine will feature on Sunday a story I wrote about the Special Forces, and today I was interviewed on CNN about it, as well as on WBUR, the Boston affiliate of NPR, and both outfits managed to spell my name inaccurately. Not that I’m sensitive about this, but the graphics that flashed on CNN identified me, repeatedly, as “Peter Maas,” and the transcript posted on CNN’s website refers to me, repeatedly, as “Peter Moss.” WBUR names me as, of course, Peter Maas.
Again, not that I mind.
