Authors In The Media With Walter B. Levis 

Recently I did a Q&A with Walter B. Levis the author of Moments Of Doubt & his recent release The Meaning Of The Murder. In the past, Walter was a crime reporter and in this edition of Authors In the Media we will discuss his crime reporting past. His articles have appeared in The NY Daily News, The National Law Journal, The Chicago Reporter, The Chicago Lawyer, The New Republic, Show Business Magazine & The New Yorker. 

Q: Welcome back to Book Notions Walter! Where did your desire to be a crime reporter come from? 

A: There are many sources behind my desire to be a crime reporter—and, eventually, to write crime fiction. But one of the earliest and most powerful influences was my father.

Before I was born, my dad managed The Bennington Hotel on Chicago’s South Side. This was in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and it wasn’t your typical hotel. The state had an arrangement where recently released prisoners could be bussed directly from the prison to The Bennington. There was some kind of voucher system in place—the state would cover up to three days’ lodging. It was a tough environment. Very tough.

My dad, as the manager, was responsible for keeping the peace and enforcing the rules. He wore a gun on his hip, another in an ankle holster, and often carried a sawed-off shotgun behind the desk. I’ll never forget him telling me, in a voice low and flat: “You never take out a gun unless you’re prepared to fire it. And you never fire unless you’re prepared to take a man’s life.”

Naturally, I asked the obvious question: Did you ever kill anyone? He told me no. Then he talked about the help he got from the Chicago Police Department—and especially from one officer he called “Two-Gun Pete,” a friend he could always count on when things got rough.

By the time I was born, these stories were history. But they made a lasting impression. Sometimes my father would drive me around the neighborhood near the hotel and tell those stories again—always in the same quiet, serious tone. Stories about people just out of prison. Stories full of danger and moral stakes. He made it clear that some of the people he dealt with were good, honest, caring, and completely trustworthy. And some were not. But all of the people in the hotel mattered. Every life mattered.

Looking back, I think that’s what I internalized: that lives on the edge—people in crisis, struggling to survive, to stay decent or not—were not just worthy of attention. They were worthy of understanding. And that instinct stayed with me, whether I was knocking on doors as a crime reporter, or years later, imagining the inner lives of characters in fiction.

Of course, back then I just thought the stories were cool. It took me a while to realize I was listening to an early education in moral ambiguity.

Q: I love asking this next question, knowing about different journeys authors have taken to being a journalist or any other career as well. Did you go to college for a journalism degree, or did you apply for a job right after you graduated high school? 

A: I earned my journalism degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and I’ll always be grateful for the training I received there. 

Before journalism, I earned a living as a tennis pro. Technically, we were called “teaching pros” to distinguish ourselves from the players on tour earning prize money. At that time, the United States Professional Tennis Association required us to pass a certification that involved demonstrating strokes and giving a live lesson. I passed that test right out of college and started working at private clubs in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. For most of my twenties, I made a good living—especially after landing a head pro position at a prestigious North Shore country club. I ran the pro shop, hired assistants, and managed court maintenance crews. At 29, I was earning more than I ever expected to at that age.

And that’s what gave me pause. I realized it was becoming a career—one that was stable and lucrative but ultimately not the life I wanted. I had been writing for years but never published. It was around that time that I decided to leave tennis and pursue journalism seriously. That’s when I enrolled at Medill and earned my master’s.

My professors encouraged me to go into sports writing, which made perfect sense. But I was drawn instead to crime reporting. The contrast between the tennis world and the crime world was too rich to ignore.

That contrast became the engine of my first novel, Moments of Doubt, published twenty years ago. It tells the story of a young tennis pro entangled with three women—one he’s supposed to marry, one he wants to marry, and one who’s already married to a Chicago gangster. The tennis club setting isn’t just backdrop—it’s a shaping force. The manicured courts, the polite conversation, the gentle pop of balls off strings—all that surface-level calm conceals status anxiety, vanity, exclusion, and the kind of quiet violence that doesn’t always make headlines but leaves a mark all the same.

My new novel, The Meaning of the Murder, draws directly from my years as a crime reporter and is set in New York City, where I’ve lived since 1990. 

In addition to tennis and journalism, I’ve spent many years teaching. But when it comes to writing fiction, one thing matters most: whether it’s a crowded classroom buzzing with teenage energy, or the quiet geometry of tennis court, or the tense chaos of a crime scene, the writer’s task is to see the story and appreciate the depth hidden beneath the surface.

Q: What is wisdom you learned from your crime reporting days that you hope future journalists as well as the general public, you’d want people to know? 

A: One of the most important lessons I learned as a crime reporter is that everyone has a story, and almost never is it as simple or as clean as it first appears. You learn very quickly that “good guys” and “bad guys” are often labels applied too quickly, and that people’s choices are shaped by complicated forces—poverty, trauma, loyalty, love, fear. In crime reporting, if you’re doing it right, you’re not just chasing the facts. You’re trying to understand how and why people end up where they do. That means listening carefully, asking better questions, and resisting the urge to judge too quickly.

The other thing I learned, maybe the most sobering thing—is how easy it is for pain to go unnoticed. The police are real people too, and they are often misunderstood. Similarly, crime victims can be forgotten. Offenders can be dehumanized. Entire communities can be reduced to caricatures. Journalism, at its best, is about bearing witness. Not just recording what happened but conveying why it matters and who it affects.

So, what would I want the next generation of journalists—and really, anyone—to know? That empathy is not a luxury. It’s discipline. And that the truth is rarely convenient, but it’s always worth the effort to pursue. Lastly: remember humility. The facts matter, but so does the awareness that no single story captures the whole of what happened. Crime is never just about the accused or the victim. It radiates outward, shaping families, communities, and institutions. If you forget that, you risk treating tragedy as spectacle.

Q: Would you ever return to crime reporting or have you moved on forever? 

A: I’ll always carry the skills of crime reporting, researching, trying to notice what might be overlooked. But at this point in my life, I’m committed to writing fiction.

The reason has to do with what I often call a shift from the outer to the inner.

As a journalist, you’re out in the world—asking questions, chasing facts. I used to stand outside courtrooms scribbling quotes, knock on doors hoping the next of kin would talk to me, trail probation officers on surprise home visits. I went to the city morgue, the state prison. I interviewed victims, suspects, cops, attorneys—and, most painfully, mothers who would never again see their sons.

And always—always—the job was to get the facts. A reporter, especially on the crime beat, lives by verification. No speculation. No emotional interpretation. It wasn’t my job to wonder what a suspect’s silence meant, or what a mother whispered at her child’s grave. If I didn’t hear it, see it, or record it, it didn’t go in the story.

As a novelist, the work is very different. I’m free to enter the inner life. I don’t have to ask what a person feels—I can try to inhabit that feeling. Imagination becomes a tool for empathy. It allows me to slow down, ask quieter questions, and consider not only what happened, but what it meant. That shift—from fact to feeling, from surface to depth—has been exhilarating and, in many ways, humanizing.

That said, never say never. I’m grateful for the years I spent as a reporter. And I don’t want to overstate the distance between crime reporting and crime fiction. Whether you’re chasing facts or following your imagination, what matters is the seriousness with which you take the craft—and the quiet, persistent struggle to write something that’s honest and well made.

Q: Since you were a crime reporter, you must have interviewed various people whether they were crooked politicians, shady business owners or even hardened criminals etc. Which famous & infamous people have you interviewed? 

A: It’s true, I’ve spoken with people across the spectrum: cops and prosecutors, politicians and business owners, and those caught on the other side of the law. But most of the people I interviewed were not famous or infamous. And some of the most revealing conversations I ever had were with people who insisted on anonymity.

That may not be the most glamorous answer, but to me, the goal was never to collect names. It was to understand people—often at the most difficult or volatile moments of their lives. What mattered wasn’t their public reputation, but what they revealed when the microphone was off, and the guard was down.

One conversation I’ll never forget wasn’t with someone who made headlines, but with a teenage boy who had just turned himself in for his part in a robbery that had gone horribly wrong. I met him at the precinct after his lawyer called to say the kid might be willing to talk. What struck me wasn’t his defiance or bravado—there was none of that. He looked exhausted. He spoke softly. And at one point he said, “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I just wanted it to stop.” That line stayed with me. Not because it was a quote for the story it wasn’t. He asked me not to use his name. But because it reminded me how often crime is about fear, pressure, panic—not evil or villainy in the cinematic sense.

So, while I can’t give you a list of boldface names, I can tell you that the most meaningful interviews I ever did were with people who had no public profile at all. Sometimes the most important truths come from people you’ve never heard of—and maybe never will.

Q: What are your favorite movies or television shows about journalism and journalists? Have you ever watched Tokyo Vice which is based on the memoir of the same name by Jake Adelstein? 

A: I haven’t seen Tokyo Vice, though I’ve heard good things. But there’s one movie that made a lasting impression—and, truthfully, helped push me toward journalism in the first place: All the President’s Men. I first saw it in college, and it hit me hard. The urgency, the silence of the newsroom, the intensity of following a lead. The idea that journalism could uncover something hidden and hold power to account—that was galvanizing.

It’s not just a movie about reporting; it’s a movie about rigor, restraint, and moral seriousness. Two reporters with phones, notepads, and typewriters—but also a deep sense of responsibility. That’s what stayed with me.

Other films and series get the excitement right, or the chaos, or the danger. But All the President’s Men captures something more fundamental and—although I have transitioned to writing fiction—the message of that movie continues to motivate me: the stories we tell matter.