While Provincetown is a real place, and is most certainly located on Cape Cod, a few names and places have been changed and a couple of houses are invented, as well as one important job. There is not now, and so far as I know, has never been an Acting Chief of Police in Provincetown. The police force in my novel bears, incidentally, no relation to the real one in town. This is in preface to remarking that all the characters are products of my imagination and all the situations are fictional. Any resemblance to living people is entirely coincidental.

I’d like to acknowledge John Updike’s gracious permission to reprint the excerpt from his “One’s Neighbor’s Wife” in People One Knows, Lord John Press, California, 1980. Its use in the novel is, of necessity, anachronistic. In addition, I’d like to thank my old friend Roger Donoghue, who first told me the anecdote from which the title is taken.

N.M.