From Dowling College's "Featured Alumni"

When Michael Jahn ('65) was writing and editing The New Voice, the campus newspaper of its time, or sitting on the bank of the Connetquot playing guitar and, in his words, "annoying those unlucky enough to walk nearby," few guessed that he was building a career. But three years after graduation he merged his music with his writing to stun the music world by becoming the first rock critic of The New York Times, covering the Woodstock Festival and hobnobbing with Jimi Hendrix and other stars of that era. And ten years following that, Jahn's first original mystery/suspense novel, The Quark Maneuver, won the prestigious Edgar Award, launching the career path he enjoys today-internationally published author of more than 50 books who is acknowledged to be one of America's premier authors of detective fiction. His first daily newspaper job was at The New York Times? His first mystery novel won a major literary award? Not too shabby. And it all began at Dowling College. "Let's ignore the 'D' in Creative Writing," he adds.

Jahn has deep roots in the area, being a native of Sayville and the son of the late Joseph C. Jahn, the editor of The Suffolk County News and an adjunct professor of journalism at Dowling. Jahn lived for a time at Meadow Croft, the former John E. Roosevelt Estate, where his grandparents were caretakers and are credited with preserving the estate during the four decades that preceded its takeover as the county park we see today. Jahn's uncle, Barney Loughlin, who was born on Meadow Croft, still maintains a vineyard there. It's open to the public on Sunday afternoons.

After graduating with a degree in social science/psychology and marrying classmate Catherine Knoll '65, Jahn worked on a master's in sociology at Adelphi University in Garden City and Columbia University in New York. At the same time, he was doing some freelance writing on the subject of folk, blues, and rock for several small newspapers and the prestigious weekly literary magazine, Saturday Review. It was during the anti-Vietnam War riots at Columbia in 1968 that Jahn got the lead that led to his joining The New York Times. He was "pulling an all-nighter" with a group of reporters, one of whom mentioned that The Times was looking for someone to replace Robert Shelton, its legendary folk music reviewer who quit to write a biography of Bob Dylan. "Why don't you send in your clips?" the man suggested. "Nobody starts their daily newspaper career at The New York Times," Jahn replied. Three weeks later, he had his first byline in the Times. Shortly thereafter, he found himself being asked to expand the role to include the progressive rock that was breaking out all over during the late 1960s. Jahn became the first person to cover rock for a major media outlet, and his writing amounted to The New York Times beginning to cover an industry. Previously, the only time that the Times covered the subject was when the fans of Elvis Presley or the Beatles broke into a riot. This innovation made Jahn something of a celebrity, with frequent TV appearances including being interviewed by David Frost on national television and his own show on then-leading radio station WNEW-FM.

"If they had cable TV in those days I would have been a pundit, one of those irritating people who show up every night pretending to know everything," Jahn said. He also met a lot of rock legends and became controversial. In short order, Jahn had:

* put Jim Morrison on the floor by shaking his hand too hard, and earned himself a mention in Morrison's obituary in Rolling Stone
* been accused by John Lennon of conspiring with the CIA to get him thrown out of the country
* been shouted at by Janis Joplin backstage at Woodstock after telling her that her new band wasn't so hot
* Club hopped with Jimi Hendrix
* Shared a bottle of Irish whiskey with Rod Stewart in the back of a limo, which, Jahn says, "wasn't qualitatively different from some of those nights in the Dowling parking lot."

Tired of watching rock stars die and dispirited by the arrival of disco, Jahn used his notoriety to switch to his true passion-- writing mystery and suspense novels. He spent a year or two writing for MCA Universal, turning such TV and motion picture properties as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, and Black Sheep Squadron into novels. After his first mystery/suspense, the 1977 book The Quark Maneuver, won the Edgar Award, Jahn wrote several dozen books in a variety of genres. One of them, Kingsley's Empire, was a historical romance set largely in a Victorian estate patterned after Idle Hour and the Vanderbilt Mansion.

Jahn also worked briefly as director of public information at Dowling. Unrelated, he wrote an article in the Times describing the rebuilding of the mansion following the devastating fire of 1974. In the early 1980s he began the Bill Donovan Mysteries, the latest of which, Murder on the Waterfront (St. Martin's Press), is now in stores. The series features N.Y.P.D. Captain Donovan, an idiosyncratic detective with progressive political opinions, a multiracial wife who is tougher and a better shot than him, and a talent for solving unusual crimes set in New York landmarks. Coming next year: Murder in Coney Island, which Jahn just finished. And he spends a fair amount of time tending his website, Michael Jahn's New York, which details the Bill Donovan mysteries and highlights Jahn's colorful career.

"I ran away from the rock thing for many years, especially after winning the Edgar," Jahn said. "I was kind of embarrassed by my rock past, as if being a rock critic wasn't something done by an adult. I changed my byline from Mike Jahn to Michael Jahn to distance myself from those days. But now that the Internet has made one's past inescapable, I have come to realize that what I did in the late '60s and early '70s was kind of cool. When the Beatles' 'Come Together' can serve as a corporate anthem you know that what once seemed just a little superfluous has gone mainstream." He adds, "After all, those sixties kids are now my age and running America. And they never threw out their records." A quick search on Google on the bylines Mike Jahn and Michael Jahn (fiction) will turn up many of his old stories and a raft of reviews of his mysteries. The online bookseller Amazon.com lists 19 of his books. And The New Yorker said of him that "Jahn writes with a flourish that is entirely his own."