John D. MacDonald (1916 to 1986) was an American crime and suspense novelist, best known for the 21 Travis McGee novels and for “The Executioners”, which was filmed twice as “Cape Fear”. Many of his books are set in Florida, his adopted home, and he sold an estimated 70 million copies. John Dann MacDonald was … Read more
Mickey Spillane (born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn on 9 March 1918, died 17 July 2006) was an American crime novelist best known for the hardboiled private detective Mike Hammer, introduced in “I, the Jury” in 1947. Industry estimates put sales of his books at more than 200 million copies. The only child of an … Read more
Robert B. Parker (1932 to 2010) was an American crime writer, the creator of the Boston private detective Spenser, who appeared in forty of his novels from “The Godwulf Manuscript” (1973) onwards. He also wrote the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall series and a set of Westerns about the lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. … Read more
Walter Mosley is an American novelist, born in Los Angeles in 1952, who is best known for his crime fiction and above all for the Easy Rawlins mysteries, which began with “Devil in a Blue Dress” in 1990. In 2020 he became the first Black man to receive the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished … Read more
Donald E. Westlake (1933 to 2008) was an American crime writer with more than a hundred books to his name. He is best known for two long-running series about professional thieves: the hard-boiled Parker novels, written as Richard Stark, and the comic capers of John Dortmunder, published under his own name. He won three Edgar … Read more
James Ellroy (born Lee Earle Ellroy in Los Angeles on 4 March 1948) is an American crime writer best known for the L.A. Quartet, which includes “The Black Dahlia” and “L.A. Confidential”, and for the Underworld USA Trilogy, which he describes as a secret history of America in the mid to late twentieth century. His … Read more
Elmore Leonard (1925 to 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter who began with Westerns in the 1950s and went on to specialise in crime fiction and suspense thrillers. His best-known novels include “Hombre”, “Swag”, “LaBrava”, “Glitz”, “Get Shorty”, “Rum Punch” and “Out of Sight”, and many of them were adapted for … Read more
Dashiell Hammett (1894 to 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and the creator of Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles and the Continental Op. He published five novels between 1929 and 1934, among them “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Thin Man”, and his work had a strong influence on … Read more
Raymond Chandler (born 1888, died 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter, and a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction. He is best known for the private detective Philip Marlowe, who first appeared in “The Big Sleep” (1939) and is the protagonist of all seven novels Chandler completed. Chandler was born in Chicago … Read more
Mario Puzo (1920 to 1999) was an American novelist and screenwriter best known for “The Godfather” (1969), his novel about a New York Mafia family. He co-wrote the screenplays for the three films that Francis Ford Coppola made from it and won two Academy Awards for them. Puzo was born on 15 October 1920 in … Read more
