Top 25 Best Crime Authors
Most Fabous Crime Writers, Including Any Sub-Genre Of Crime Fiction Including Detective Mystery Or Hard-Boiled Best adapted in cinema.
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Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" stories (1912-1929) about a scientist and explorer, and the "Brigadier Gerard" stories (1894-1910) about a French soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Doyle's literary works have frequently been adapted into film and television.
In 1859, Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to an Irish Catholic family. His father was Charles Altamont Doyle (1832 - 1893), a professional illustrator and water-colorist who is primarily remembered for fantasy-style paintings. Doyle's mother was Mary Foley (1837-1920). Through his father, Doyle was a nephew of the antiquarian James William Edmund Doyle (1822 - 1892), the illustrator Richard Doyle (1824-1883), and the gallery director Henry Edward Doyle (1827 -1893). Doyle's paternal grandfather was the political cartoonist and caricaturist John Doyle (1797-1868).
During his early years, Doyle's family had financial problems due to his father's struggles with depression and alcoholism. They received financial support from affluent uncles, who also financed Doyle's education. From 1868 to 1870, Doyle was educated at Hodder Place, a Jesuit preparatory school located at Stonyhurst, Lancashire. From 1870 to 1875, Doyle attended Stonyhurst College, a Roman Catholic boarding school. He disliked the school due to its rather limited curriculum, and the constant threats of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation used to discipline students.
From 1875 to 1876, Doyle received further education at Stella Matutina, a Jesuit school located at Feldkirch, Austria. His family wanted him to perfect his use of the German language, but this school offered a wider range of study subjects. Stella Matutina attracted student from many countries, and was more cosmopolitan in nature than Doyle's previous schools.
Doyle decided to follow a medical career. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He also took botany lessons at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. During his university years, Doyle started writing short stories. He had trouble finding a publisher, and "Blackwood's Magazine" (1817-1980) rejected his submitted work. Doyle's first published short story was "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" (1879), featuring a demon in South Africa. That same year, Doyle published his first academic article in a science journal. The article examined the uses of the flowering plant Gelsemium as a poison. As an experiment, Doyle self-administrated doses of the poison and recorded the symptoms.
In 1880, Doyle worked for a while as a doctor in the whaling ship "Hope". In 1881, following his graduation from medical school, Doyle served as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba. In 1882, Doyle and a former classmate established a medical practice in Plymouth, Devon. Their partnership failed, and Doyle soon started his own practice in Southsea, Hampshire. He did not have many patients, so he decided to resume writing fiction to supplement his income.
In 1886, Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes. He loosely based his creation on his former college teacher Joseph Bell (1837 - 1911), inspired by Bell's emphasis on the importance of "deduction and inference and observation". Doyle completed the first Holmes novel, "A Study in Scarlet" (1887), and sold the rights to the publishing house "Ward, Lock & Co." (1854-1964). The novel's publication was delayed until November, 1887, but it was well-received by professional critics.
Doyle next completed the sequel novel "The Sign of the Four" (1890), commissioned from the American literary magazine Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (1868-1915). He started writing short stories about Holmes for the British literary magazine "The Strand Magazine" (1891-1950).
Besides Holmes stories, Doyle wrote seven historical novels between 1888 and 1906. He wrote "Micah Clarke" (1889), as a fictionalized account of the Monmouth Rebellion (1685) and its consequences. The novel also voices Doyle's arguments against religious extremism. He wrote "The White Company" (1891) to examine the role of mercenaries in 14th-century warfare, depicting the campaigns of Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) in the Kingdom of Castile. He wrote "The Great Shadow" (1892) to feature the experiences of soldiers in the Battle of Waterloo (1815). He wrote "The Refugees" (1893) to examine the fates of Huguenot refugees who were fleeing 17th-century France to escape religious persecution by Louis XIV (1638-1715, reigned 1643-1715). He wrote "Sir Nigel" (1906) to examine the early phases of the Hundred Years' War (1337 - 1453). He regarded these novels to be his best literary work, though they were never as popular as his crime novels.
In 1900, Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), though he had no previous military experience. He was stationed at a field hospital at Bloemfontein. At about this time, Doyle wrote the non-fiction book "The Great Boer War" (1900), which covered in detail the early phases of the war. He also wrote the companion work "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct" in order to defend the British Empire from accusations of misconduct in its military efforts. These works were translated in multiple languages, and were appreciated by the British government. For his services to the British Empire, Doyle was knighted in 1902. In 1903, Doyle became a knight of the Order of Saint John, a British royal order of chivalry that was based on the original Knights Hospitaller.
In 1906, Doyle was involved in efforts to exonerate the lawyer George Edalji, a mild-mannered man who had been convicted of animal mutilations on insufficient evidence. Doyle helped publicize other instances of miscarriages of justice, and convinced the public that there was need of reforms in the legal system. In 1907, British authorities reacted to this campaign by establishing the Court of Criminal Appeal.
In 1909, Doyle wrote the non-fiction work "The Crime of the Congo" (1909). In the book, Doyle denounced the human rights abuses in the Congo Free State, and claimed that the Belgian colonial forces had enslaved the local population. He quoted testimonies from many witnesses and tried to convince the public of a need to intervene in the area.
World War I (1914-1918) was a difficult time for Doyle , as several of his relatives and friends died due to the war. Doyle's son Kingsley was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916), and never fully recovered. Kingsley died of pneumonia in 1918, while still hospitalized. Doyle's brother, Brigadier-general Innes Doyle, died of pneumonia in 1919. Doyle's brother-in-law, the famous author E. W. Hornung, died of pneumonia in 1921. The series of deaths led Doyle to further embrace Spiritualism, and that faith's claims about existence beyond the grave. He spend much of the 1920s as a missionary of Spiritualism, and investigated supposed supernatural phenomena. He also wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. In 1926, Doyle financed the construction of a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London.
In July 1930, Doyle suffered a heart attack while staying in his then-residence, Windlesham Manor, in Crowborough, Sussex. He spend his last moments in reassuring his wife Jean Leckie that she was wonderful. He was 71-years-old at the time of his death. He was survived by two sons and two daughters. His daughter Jean Conan Doyle (1912 - 1997) was the copyright holder of much of her father's works until her own death.
Since Doyle was no longer a Christian at the time of his death, his family declined giving him a Christian burial place. Doyle was buried in Windlesham Manor's rose garden. His remains were later re-interred in Minstead churchyard, New Forest, Hampshire. His wife's remains were buried beside him. His gravestone epitaph described him as "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".
Doyle is long gone, but his works have remained popular into the 21st century. Doyle has been cited as an influence on later crime writers, and Agatha Christie's earliest novels were strongly influenced by Sherlock Holmes' stories. His life's events have inspired several biographies, and a number of fictionalized accounts.- Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood to when she turned 12-years-old in 1902. Her parents taught her how to read, write, perform arithmetic, and play music. Her father died in 1901. Agatha was sent to a girl's school in Torquay, Devon, where she studied from 1902 to 1905. She continued her education in Paris, France from 1905 to 1910. She then returned to her surviving family in England.
As a young adult, Agatha aspired to be a writer and produced a number of unpublished short stories and novels. She submitted them to various publishers and literary magazines, but they were all rejected. Several of these unpublished works were later revised into more successful ones. While still in this point of her life, Agatha sought advise from professional writer Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960). Meanwhile she was searching for a suitable husband and in 1913 accepted a marriage proposal from military officer and pilot-in-training Archibald "Archie" Christie. They married in late 1914. Her married name became "Agatha Christie" and she used it for most of her literary works, including ones created decades following the end of her first marriage.
During World War I, Archie Christie was send to fight in the war and Agatha joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British voluntary unit providing field nursing services. She performed unpaid work as a volunteer nurse from 1914 to 1916. Then she was promoted to "apothecaries' assistant" (dispenser), a position which earned her a small salary until the end of the war. She ended her service in September, 1918.
Agatha wrote "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", her debut novel ,in 1916, but was unable to find a publisher for it until 1920. The novel introduced her famous character Hercule Poirot and his supporting characters Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The novel is set in World War I and is one of the few of her works which are connected to a specific time period.
Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer.
In 1926, Archie Christie announced to Agatha that he had a mistress and that he wanted a divorce. Agatha took it hard and mysteriously disappeared for a period of 10 days. After an extensive manhunt and much publicity, she was found living under a false name in Yorkshire. She had assumed the last name of Archie's mistress and claimed to have no memory of how she ended up there. The doctors who attended to her determined that she had amnesia. Despite various theories by multiple sources, these 10 days are the most mysterious chapter in Agatha's life.
Agatha and Archie divorced in 1928, though she kept the last name Christie. She gained sole custody of her daughter Rosalind. In 1930, Agatha married her second (and last) husband Max Mallowan, a professional archaeologist. They would remain married until her death in 1976.Christie often used places that she was familiar with as settings for her novels and short stories. Her various travels with Max introduced her to locations of the Middle East, and provided inspiration for a number of novels.
In 1934, Agatha and Max settled in Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, which served as their main residence until their respective deaths. During World War II, she served in the pharmacy at the University College Hospital, where she gained additional training about substances used for poisoning cases. She incorporated such knowledge for realistic details in her stories.
She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and a Dame Commander of the same order in 1971. Her husband was knighted in 1968. They are among the relatively few couples where both members have been honored for their work. Agatha continued writing until 1974, though her health problems affected her writing style. Her memory was problematic for several years and she had trouble remembering the details of her own work, even while she was writing it. Recent researches on her medical condition suggest that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. She died of natural causes in early 1976. - Writer
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Dashiell Hammett was born May 27, 1894, in St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Richard Hammett and Mary Bond. He joined the Baltimore branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. He enlisted in the US Army's Ambulance Corps in June 1918 and was posted to a camp 20 miles from Baltimore, where he caught the flu, which developed into tuberculosis. He was invalided out of the army in July 1919 and returned to Pinkerton's. Hammett entered the veterans hospital near Tacoma, Washington, with tuberculosis in 1920. Upon his release he worked at Pinkerton's Spokane branch. Hospitalized again with tuberculosis, he met and courted a nurse, Josephine Dolan. In February 1921 he was moved to an army hospital near San Diego. After he was released he married a now-pregnant Josie in San Francisco. Hammett worked for the San Francisco branch of Pinkerton's, but left the agency in 1921 or 22 due to ill health. He took a writing course and sold droll vignettes to "The Smart Set" magazine during 1922, and some short stories to other magazines. He began to sell detective stories to "The Black Mask" from 1923. After the birth of the couple's second daughter in 1926, Hammett gave up freelance writing and became an advertising copy writer for the jeweler Albert Samuels, but left after six months due to ill health. Forced by his tuberculosis to live apart from Jose and the children, the marriage eventually broke up. Hammett supported himself through writing, chiefly for "The Black Mask", now under editor Joe Shaw. Hammett's long short stories were republished in novel form by Alfred Knopf. In 1929 Hammett moved to New York. After the success of his novel "The Maltese Falcon", he was engaged as a screenwriter by Paramount Pictures and moved to Hollywood, where he met Lillian Hellman. He returned to New York in 1931, where he wrote "The Glass Key". "The Thin Man" was published as a magazine serial in 1933. Hammett was encouraged by Hearst to write the "Secret Agent X9" comic strip, which ran from 1934-35, his last original work. In 1942 he re-enlisted in the army and was posted to the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska, where he edited The Adakian. When discharged in 1945, he returned to New York and became President of the NY Civil Rights Congress. In July 1951 Hammett was subpoenaed to testify on the Civil Rights Congress' bail fund, and was jailed for refusing to answer questions. Upon his release from jail, he was presented with a bill by the Internal Revenue Service for $111,000 in back taxes. In failing health, he lived off and on with Hellman. In 1961 he was admitted to New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, where he died on January 10.- Mario Puzo was born October 15, 1920, in "Hell's Kitchen" on Manhattan's (NY) West Side and, following military service in World War II, attended New York's New School for Social Research and Columbia University. His best-known novel, "The Godfather," was preceded by two critically acclaimed novels, "The Dark Arena" and "The Fortunate Pilgrim." In 1978, he published "Fools Die," followed by "The Sicilian" (1984) and "The Fourth K" (1991). Mario Puzo has also written several screenplays, including Earthquake (1974), Superman (1978), and all three "Godfather" movies, for which he received two Academy Awards. Mario's latest novel, 1996's "The Last Don," was made into a CBS television miniseries in May 1997, starring Danny Aiello, Kirstie Alley and Joe Mantegna. In 1997, Part II was aired. Also in 1997, Mario's "The Fortunate Pilgrim" was re-released by Random House. Mario passed away July 2, 1999, at his home in Bay Shore, Long Island. His last novel, "Omerta," will be published July, 2000. He is survived by his companion of 20 years, Carol Gino, and five children.
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An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France and Germany before returning to England in 1907 and becoming a naturalized British subject. He took a civil service job in the Admiralty, which he left in 1912 to return to America, settling in California. After the US entered World War I he enlisted in the Canadian Army, then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. After the armistice he returned to California and got a series of bookkeeping jobs, finally becoming a vice-president with the Dabney Oil syndicate.
All along, however, he had been submitting stories, poems, sketches and essays to a number of periodicals, but when the Depression hit and the bottom fell out of the oil business, he lost his job and turned to writing full-time. He found a niche with stories of the "hard-boiled" school popularized by Dashiell Hammett, and had many of his early stories accepted by Black Mask, the same mystery magazine that had first published Hammett. His first four novels--"The Big Sleep" (1939, filmed 1946 [The Big Sleep (1946)] and 1978 [The Big Sleep (1978)]); "Farewell My Lovely" (1940, filmed 1944 [Murder, My Sweet (1944)] and 1975 [Farewell, My Lovely (1975)]); "The High Window" (1942, filmed 1947 [The Brasher Doubloon (1947)]); and "The Lady in the Lake (1943, filmed 1946 [Lady in the Lake (1946)])--which reworked plots from some of his short stories, were his most successful.
He spent some time in Hollywood as a screenwriter, contributing to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), the film noir classic The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). He wrote realistically, in stark contrast to the English style of drawing-room puzzle mysteries where an amateur detective always knows more than the police and clues turn up at just the right moment. Chandler dismissed these plots as "having God sit in your lap."- Writer
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John le Carré was born in Poole, Dorset in England on 19 October, 1931. He went to Sherborne School and, later, studied German literature for one year at University of Bern. Later, he went to Lincoln College, Oxford and graduated in Modern Languages. From 1956 to 1958, he taught at Eton and from 1959 to 1964, he was a member of the British Foreign Service as second secretary at British Embassy in Bonn, and then, as Politician Consul in Hamburg. His first novel was written in 1961 and, by the time of his death in December 2020, he had published nearly 30. His books took many prizes, and inspired numerous films.- Crime novelist and creator of the private eye Lew Archer, Ross MacDonald is often linked to his predecessors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as a master of the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction, but MacDonald added a psychological depth and a unity of theme which was unique.
MacDonald was born Kenneth Millar in Los Gatos, California. His parents were Canadian, and the family moved back to Canada when Kenneth was three, after which his father abandoned them. For most of his youth Millar was shunted around from relative to relative; at one point his mother even considered putting him in an orphanage but relented right at the orphanage gates, and poverty, rootlessness and the search for family would become major motifs in his work. He attended schools in Ontario, graduating from the University of Western Ontario in 1938, then doing graduate work at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.
He had been writing short, light pieces for school newspapers but turned to more serious work during a stint in the US Naval Reserve during World War II. His first books were published under his own name, but in 1949 he brought out "The Moving Target" under the pen name John MacDonald in order to avoid confusion with his wife, Margaret Millar, who also wrote crime fiction. However, John D. MacDonald, creator of the Travis McGee series, complained that John MacDonald was his own real name, and perhaps Millar should get another pen name, so he settled on Ross MacDonald.
"The Moving Target" marked the first appearance of Lew Archer; the name was taken from "Ben-Hur" author Lew Wallace and the name of Sam Spade's murdered partner Miles Archer in Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon." A moderate success, "The Moving Target" was followed by "The Drowning Pool" in 1950 (filmed later as The Drowning Pool (1975)) and 19 more, including "The Barbarous Coast" (1956), "The Galton Case" (1959), "The Wycherly Woman" (1961), "The Goodbye Look" (1969), "The Underground Man" (1971), "Sleeping Beauty" (1973) and his last, "The Blue Hammer" (1976).
During the 1960s and 1970s his critical reputation grew: he was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1971, and Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding said that his works were "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American author." His audience base was widened with film versions of "The Moving Target" (as Harper (1966), with Paul Newman and "The Drowning Pool" (also with Newman, 1975). A film version of an early Kenneth Millar book, "Blue City" (1947, filmed as Blue City (1986)), was less successful.
MacDonald passed away at his home in Santa Barbara, California, after a three-year battle with Alzheimer's Disease. - Writer
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Born into a wealthy and influential English family, Ian Fleming spent his early years attending top British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst military academy. He took to writing while schooling in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and upon failing the entrance requirements for Foreign Service joined the news agency Reuters as a journalist -- winning the respect of his peers for his coverage of a "show trial" in Russia of several Royal Engineers on espionage charges. Fleming briefly worked in the financial sector for the family bank, but just prior to the Second World War, was recruited into British Naval Intelligence where he excelled, shortly achieving the rank of Commander. When the war ended, Fleming retired to Jamaica where he built a house called "Goldeneye," took up writing full-time and created the character that would make him famous -- British Secret Service agent James Bond, in a novel called "Casino Royale." Fleming spent the rest of his life writing and traveling the world, but as his Bond character reached new heights of popularity on movie screens, Fleming was in ailing health. He died of a heart attack (his second) in England in August 1964 at the age of 56.- Writer
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Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco merchant in Richmond, Virginia, and was sent to a boarding school in London, England. He later attended the University of Virginia for one year, but dropped out and ran up massive gambling debts after spending all of his tuition money. John Allan broke off Poe's engagement to his fiancée Sarah Royster. Poe was heartbroken, traumatized, and broke. He had no way out and enlisted in the army in May of 1827. At the same time Poe published his first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems" (1827). In 1829, he became a West Point cadet, but was dismissed after 6 months for disobedience. By that time he published "Al Aaraf" (1929) and "Poems by Edgar A. Poe" (1831), with the funds contributed by his fellow cadets. His early poetry, though written in the manner of Lord Byron, already shows the musical effects of his verses.
Poe moved in with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her teenage daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm, whom he married before she was 14 years old. He earned respect as a critic and writer. In his essays "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe formulated important literary theories. But his career suffered from his compulsive behavior and from alcoholism. He did produce, however, a constant flow of highly musical poems, of which "The Raven" (1845) and "The Bells" (1849) are the finest examples. Among his masterful short stories are "Ligeia" (1838), "The Fall of the House of Usher"(1839) and "The Masque of the Red Death". Following his own theory of creating "a certain unique or single effect", Poe invented the genre of the detective story. His works: "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is probably the first detective story ever published.
Just when his life began to settle, Poe was devastated by the death of his wife Virginia in 1847. Two years later he returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his former fiancée, Sarah Royster, who, by that time, was a widow. But shortly after their happy reconciliation he was found unconscious on a street in Baltimore. Poe was taken to the Washington College Hospital where Doctor John Moran diagnosed "lesions on the brain" (the Doctor believed Poe was mugged). He died 4 days later, briefly coming in and out of consciousness, just to whisper his last words, "Lord, help my poor soul." The real cause of his death is still unknown and his death certificate has disappeared. Poe's critic and personal enemy, named Rufus Griswold, published an insulting obituary; later he visited Poe's home and took away all of the writer's manuscripts (which he never returned), and published his "Memoir" of Poe, in which he forged a madman image of the writer.
The name of the woman in Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" was used by Vladimir Nabokov in 'Lolita' as the name for Humbert's first love, Annabelle Leigh. Nabokov also used in 'Lolita' some phrases borrowed from the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was set to music by Claude Debussy as an opera. Sergei Rachmaninoff created a musical tribute to Poe by making his favorite poem "The Bells" into the eponymous Choral Symphony.- Writer
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Chase was born in London and educated at King's School, Rochester, Kent. He left home at the age of 18 and worked as children encyclopedia salesman and book wholesaler before devoting himself to writing. He wrote his first book No Orchids for Miss Blandish in the age of 33. During his career Chase published some 80 books. Although many of his stories are located in the US, he paid there only two brief visits, one to Miami and one in New Orleans. Most of the author's knowledge of America was derived from encyclopedias, maps and slang dictionaries.- Writer
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Dan Brown was born on 22 June 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Inferno (2016), The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). He was previously married to Blythe Newlon.- Prolific mystery writer Cornell Woolrich was born in New York City, but his parents separated when he was young and he spent much of his childhood in Latin America with his father. Then he was sent back to New York to live with his rich, domineering mother, Claire. He attended Columbia University where he wrote his first novel, a Jazz Age piece published in 1926 titled "Cover Charge". Another book, "Children of the Ritz", followed in 1927. Hollywood beckoned but his time there as an (uncredited) screenwriter proved to be unhappy. A disastrous marriage to a producer's daughter failed quickly and he headed back to New York -- and Claire. He found his niche writing suspense stories for magazines such as "Argosy", "Black Mask" and "Thrilling Mystery". Sales were made to Hollywood, his reputation grew, and his bank account increased. Some called him "the Poe of the 20th century". Then his mother sank into a lengthy illness and his output fell as he devoted more and more of his time to her care. By the time she died in 1957, he was "burned out". From then until his death in 1968, he lived a lonely life marked by alcoholism and poor health (he delayed visiting a doctor when his leg started bothering him; he eventually lost it to gangrene). When he died his funeral went unattended.
He bequeathed money to Columbia to set up a creative writing course which was not named after him but after who else?-Claire. - Writer
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Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name "King," under which Stephen was born. He has an older brother, David. The Kings were a typical family until one night, when Donald said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. Ruth took over raising the family with help from relatives. They traveled throughout many states over several years, finally moving back to Durham, Maine, in 1958.
Stephen began his actual writing career in January of 1959, when David and Stephen decided to publish their own local newspaper named "Dave's Rag". David bought a mimeograph machine, and they put together a paper they sold for five cents an issue. Stephen attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, in 1962. Collaborating with his best friend Chris Chesley in 1963, they published a collection of 18 short stories called "People, Places, and Things--Volume I". King's stories included "Hotel at the End of the Road", "I've Got to Get Away!", "The Dimension Warp", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", "The Stranger", "I'm Falling", "The Cursed Expedition", and "The Other Side of the Fog." A year later, King's amateur press, Triad and Gaslight Books, published a two-part book titled "The Star Invaders".
King made his first actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in length. In 1966 he graduated from high school and took a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom." Later that summer King began working on a novel called "Getting It On", about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward off the National Guard. During his first year at college, King completed his first full-length novel, "The Long Walk." He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf/Random House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection badly and filed the book away.
He made his first small sale--$35--with the story "The Glass Floor". In June 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and a certificate to teach high school. King's next idea came from the poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." He found bright colored green paper in the library and began work on "The Dark Tower" saga, but his chronic shortage of money meant that he was unable to further pursue the novel, and it, too, was filed away. King took a job at a filling station pumping gas for the princely sum of $1.25 an hour. Soon he began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier.
On January 2, 1971, he married Tabitha King (born Tabitha Jane Spruce). In the fall of 1971 King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of Bangor. Stephen then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White. After completing a few pages, he decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately, Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story, which he did. In January 1973 he submitted "Carrie" to Doubleday. In March Doubleday bought the book. On May 12 the publisher sold the paperback rights for the novel to New American Library for $400,000. His contract called for his getting half of that sum, and he quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies made from his work. He has been called the "Master of Horror". His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, and writes out of his home.
In June 1999 King was severely injured in an accident, he was walking alongside a highway and was hit by a van, that left him in critical condition with injuries to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After three weeks of operations, he was released from the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.- Stieg Larsson's three novels (collectively known as "The Millennium Series") were published posthumously, and each became a feature film. They were entitled (for the American market) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally published in 2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (originally published in 2006), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (originally published in 2007). The feature films retained the same titles for the American market.
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Dennis Lehane was born on 4 August 1965 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for The Drop (2014), Mystic River (2003) and Live by Night (2016). He was previously married to Dr. Angela Mililani (Lieb) Bernardo and Sheila Fort Lawn.- Writer
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James Patterson was born on 22 March 1947 in Newburgh, New York, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Alex Cross (2012), Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001). He has been married to Susan Patterson since 24 July 1997. They have one child.- Writer
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Cormac McCarthy was born on 20 July 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Road (2009), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Counselor (2013). He was married to Jennifer Claire Winkley, Anne DeLisle and Lee Holleman. He died on 13 June 2023 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.- Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the female equivalent of a knighthood. Thus, she achieved a trifecta of sorts, as her father and her husband were both knights.
She was born on May 13, 1907 in London, the second daughter of the famous actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, who himself was knighted in 1922, and the actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was the famous anglo-French writer George L. Du Maurier, the creator of Svengali in his 1894 novel "Trilby". (She was also cousin to the Llewelyn Davies boys, through her grandfather Gerald. The boys were the inspiration for the boys in J.M. Barrie' Peter Pan (1924) and his Neverland works.) Her husband was also famous: Frederick A. M. Browning, the WWII Commander "Boy" Browning renowned as the "father of the British airborne forces." He helped plan and execute Operation Market Garden, an airborne operation that put Allied troops into Germany and the Netherlands, an ultimately unsuccessful venture chronicled in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1977). During the Second World War, Boy Browning achieved the rank of Lieutenant General and a knighthood. Browning's quote that Arnheim was a bridge too far later became famous as a book title and ultimately a movie title. Daphne published her first short story in 1928; her first novel, "The Loving Spirit", was published in 1931, and her last, "Rule Britannia", forty-one year later. In between, she achieved her greatest success with the novel Rebecca (1940), which was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into a classic film that won the Best Picture Oscar for 1940. Another novel, Don't Look Now (1973), adapted by Nicolas Roeg, is also considered a classic film in Britain.
Along with "Rebecca", she had great successes with her novels Jamaica Inn (1939) and Frenchman's Creek (1944), both of which were adapted into movies. The three novels were set in Cornwall, where she lived. In addition to multiple non-fiction books, Daphne Du Maurier also wrote three plays (including an adaptation of "Rebecca").
She died on April 19, 1989, in Par in her beloved Cornwall, five weeks shy of her 82nd birthday. - Writer
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Tom Clancy became one of the best-selling writers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, starting with the publication of his 1984 thriller, The Hunt for Red October (1990). Born in Baltimore to a U.S. Post Office employee and his wife on April 12, 1947, Clancy graduated from Loyola Blakefield, a Catholic private high school, in 1965 and then attended Loyola College. After graduating with his bachelor's degree in English literature, Clancy went into the insurance business as poor eyesight kept him out of the military. Despite being unable to serve during the Vietnam War, military and Cold War politics remained close to his heart.
While running his own insurance agency in Maryland, he wrote "The Hunt for Red October", which was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984. Clancy received the princely sum of $5,000 from this most unusual venue for a work of fiction, but the book struck a nerve in the depths of the latter stages of the Cold War. The hardcover from the Naval Institute sold 45,000 copies, an amazing amount for a first novel from a publishing house peddling its first book of fiction, but the paperback (boosted by a strong recommendation from President Ronald Reagan) sold two million copies.
The book was very detailed and extremely savvy when it came to the machinations of the military and Cold War politicians. In fact, Clancy's editor at the Naval Institute Press had him eliminate details, which trimmed the novel by 100 pages. In all, he wrote 28 books, mostly fiction but also, military themed non-fiction books. Clancy placed 17 books on the New York Times Best Seller List, many of which hit #1. His oeuvre accounted for sales of 100 million copies, making him one of the all-time most popular writers in history.
Clancy became a media industry onto himself. He was successful lending his name and ideas to video games, and his video game company Red Storm Entertainment was bought out for $45 million in 2000. Clancy-branded video games racked up sales of 76 million units. Movies adapted from Clancy's works racked up $786.5 million at the box office.
Tom Clancy died of heart failure on October 1, 2013. He was 66 years old.- Writer
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James M. Cain was a 'Film Noir' author. His father was a professor, and president, of 'Washington College'. His mother was an opera singer in Maryland.
James graduated from the same college in 1910, and became a writer for 'Baltimore American', then 'Baltimore Sun' [still being published] by 1914. He was drafted in 1916, and spent 1918 in France as a writer for the 'Army Times'. When released, he did writing for various publications, and by 1934, his first novel,"The Postman Always Rings Twice", was published. Of Course, a very popular movie in 1946.
With adaptations of his novels[credit only as 'story contributor'],he was much in demand in the 40's in the 'Film Noir' category. But, in 1946, he formed a 'Cain Plan' ["American Authors' Authority"]whereby The writers would have authority of copyrights, and be the representative for them in negotiations with the movie producers and court disputes. Resembling 'S.A.G.', it was opposed by an org. called, "The American Writers' Assoc.". There was a debate carried on in the 'Saturday Review'.
He was married 4 times.- Writer
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Nelle Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama in the 1920s. It was a time of hostility between whites and blacks in the United States, especially in Alabama. Her father, a lawyer, also ran a local newspaper. Her mother suffered from mental illness and oftentimes stayed inside from others; she was thought to suffer from bipolar disorder. Harper was a young lady with an agile personality. She was tomboyish, and eventually befriended Truman Persons. Truman would also turn out to become a writer later on in life, as Truman Capote, and they would later on collaborate in a newspaper called The New Yorker. Harper would often serve as Truman's protector in elementary school, as she was a tougher girl who did not fear other boys. Lee developed a passion for literature in high school. After graduating in 1944, she went on to join Huntingdon College-an all-female academy located in Montgomery. Throughout her college years, she was distant from other students. Rather than working on her makeup and getting dates, she was focused on her studies, constantly reading and writing.
Lee moved to New York in the 1950s, took a job as an airline reservations clerk, and wrote her first novel during that time. "To Kill a Mockingbird," published in 1960, won a Pulitzer Prize, and is still admired, widely-taught, and beloved. The film version, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), received several Academy Awards. Lee insisted that the novel is a work of fiction, not autobiography. She protected her privacy, spoke through her literary agent, McIntosh and Otis, did not appear on television and did not give interviews. She lived in Monroeville, Alabama and New York. She died in Monroeville on February 19, 2016.- Thomas Harris was born in 1940 in Jackson, Mississippi, USA. He was raised in the town of Rich where his father worked as a farmer. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Baylor University in Texas in 1964. While attending school, he also worked for the local newspaper.
After graduating, Harris traveled Europe for a time. Back in the USA, he worked for the Associated Press out of New York. Not coincidentally, his duties for the press included covering murders and other crimes. This helped fuel his imagination in the fictional world, and he began to write macabre stories for magazines that began to show his attention for detail that would make his subsequent novels so popular.
In 1975, he wrote his first novel, Black Sunday, about a diabolical plot to kill thousands with a blimp during the Superbowl. Perhaps ahead of his time, the terrorism of 11 September, 2001, led to many stadiums being turned into no-fly zones due to fears of a similar attack. The book was turned into a film -- Black Sunday (1977) -- a very short two years after being published. Following its success, he devoted his career entirely to fictional novelization.
In 1981, Harris wrote his first book in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, Red Dragon. Though the character of Lecter did not become famous (or infamous, as the case may be) for another decade, the book did spark a loosely-based movie, Manhunter (1986), which was quickly dismissed at first, grossing back only about half its cost. Then, in 1988, Harris wrote another novel about the character Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs. This time, he gave the character more of a presence, although he still did not dominate the book. When this was turned into a film three years later as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), it became an instant hit and swept the "Big 5" at the Academy Awards, becoming only the third movie to do so.
After the success of The Silence of the Lambs in both movie and book form, there became a growing demand among fans - and film producer Dino De Laurentiis -- for there to be another chapter in the Hannibal Lector series. It took 11 years between novels, but Harris finally delivered again in 1999 with the best-selling novel Hannibal. It was made into a film two years later in Hannibal (2001) and, although dismissed by some critics and fans for straying from the book in parts (as well as Jodie Foster's non-appearance as Agent Clarisse Starling), it set opening records in box office sales for an R-rated film.
Because of the large box office take and the fact that Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his role in the second Lecter film, did not play Lecter in Manhunter (1986), De Laurentis and Harris came to terms to make a second version of the first book, this time properly titled Red Dragon (2002). This film version was more in keeping with the book than the first film was.
Unable to escape from being known as the man who created Lecter, Harris again agreed to make not only another novel on the character, but to write the material for the film adaption as well. The current working title is Behind the Mask. As of 2005, Harris resides in Miami, Florida, and Sag Harbor, New York, USA. - Writer
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A graduate of Mississippi State University and Ole Miss Law School, John Grisham obtained his law degree in 1981 and practiced law for about 10 years, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. He was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1983 and served until 1990. He gave up his law practice to write full-time. He began writing in 1984, and three years later finished his first novel, "A Time To Kill", published by Wynwood Press in June 1988. He is the best-selling author of "A Time to Kill", "The Firm", "The Pelican Brief" and "The Client". He lives with his wife and their two children on a farm in Oxford, Mississippi.- Writer
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Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and his influence on the cinema and theatre was enormous. He wrote five plays and almost all of his novels, including "Brighton Rock", "The Ministry of Fear" and "The End of the Affair", have been brought to the screen. A superb storyteller, he also wrote the screenplays for such classics as The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
A colorful and larger-than-life figure, Greene traveled widely throughout the world, from the jungles of Liberia to the Mexican desert to the Far East and the Soviet Union. In World War Two was a member of MI-6 (the British intelligence service) working with the double-agent Kim Philby, and he numbered among his friends such diverse personalities as Evelyn Waugh, Noël Coward and Panamanian dictator Gen. Omar Torrijos. A notorious womanizer, he married only once but had a string of extra-marital affairs and confessed he was "a bad husband and a fickle lover." During the 1920s and 1930s he confessed that he had had relationships with over 50 prostitutes.
Born in Hertforshire, England, in 1904, the son of the headmaster of Berkhamstead School, Greene was educated at Berkhamstead and later Oxford. At Oxford he published more than 60 poems and stories and soon after graduation converted to Roman Catholicism. "I had to find a religion to measure my evil against" he said. His first novel, "The Man Within", came out in 1929, to public and critical acclaim. "Stamboul Train" (1934), a topical political thriller, was the first to reach the screen (as Orient Express (1934)) and a string of other taut suspense dramas followed: "This Gun For Hire" (1942), "The Ministry of Fear" (1943) and "The Confidential Agent" (1945). It was his novel "Brighton Rock", however, which depicted Pinkie, a teenage gangster with demonic spirituality, that eventually became a milestone in British cinema. Originally a successful stage play starring Richard Attenborough as Pinkie, Greene co-wrote the 1947 screenplay Brighton Rock (1948)) with Terence Rattigan.
Greene's collaboration with director _Carol Reed' produced three distinctive films: The Fallen Idol (1948), starring Ralph Richardson, The Third Man (1949) and Our Man in Havana (1959). One of the peaks in British filmmaking, "The Third Man", starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime, was a skillful tale of deception and drug trafficking. Greene developed the screenplay from a single sentence: "I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, amongst a host of strangers in the Strand". The character of Harry Lime later inspired an American radio series starring Orson Welles, short stories published by the News of the World and the TV series The Third Man (1959), starring Michael Rennie. In Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994). Kate Winslet fantasizes about Harry.
As well as writing novels, Greene reviewed films for "The Spectator", then for the short-lived "Night and Day", which folded after he was accused of a "gross outrage" on 'Shirley Temple (I)'--then nine years old--in his review of Wee Willie Winkie (1937). He wrote that "her admirers--middle-aged men and clergymen--respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality". In the view of the prosecuting counsel it was "one of the most horrible libels one could well imagine."
Greene was an intelligent and sophisticated playwright. His first play written directly for the stage was "The Living Room" (1953), a powerful drama of suicide and despair which starred Dorothy Tutin. It was followed by "The Potting Shed" (1957), a drama about an atheist's pact with God, and "The Complaisant Lover" (1959), a comedy of manners in which a husband and lover knowingly share a wife's favors, which starred Michael Redgrave. Many of his played were televised.
Greene's work continues to fascinate actors, filmmakers and cinema goers throughout the world. In 1973 Maggie Smith and Alec McCowen starred in "Travels With My Aunt" (Smith's role had originally been offered to Katharine Hepburn), Nicol Williamson and Ann Todd starred in The Human Factor (1979) and Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore starred in a remake of The End of the Affair (1999).
Greene said of his writing: "When I describe a scene . . . I capture it with the moving eye of the cine-camera rather than with the photographer's eye--which leaves it frozen. In this precise domain I think the cinema has influenced me."
Towards the end of his life Greene lived in Vevey, Switzerland, with his companion Yvonne Cloetta. He died there peacefully on April 13, 1991.- Rex Stout was an American writer from Indiana, primarily remembered for his detective fiction works. His best known characters were the Montenegrin armchair detective Nero Wolfe and his witty live-in assistant Archie Goodwin. Nero was depicted as a middle-aged war veteran, who rarely left his luxurious New York City brownstone house. So he relied on Archie for investigative work, and for personal assessments on some of the characters involved in their cases. The book series featuring the two characters lasted from 1934 to 1975. In 1985, Stout's final novella collection was published posthumously. Stout served as president of the Authors Guild for several years, and briefly served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). He won the MWA's prestigious Grand Master Award in 1959.
In 1886, Stout was born to a Quaker family in Noblesville, Indiana. The city was one of the suburbs of Indianapolis. It underwent growth in the late 1880s, following the discovery of natural gas resources within the city's areas. Stout's parents were the teacher John Wallace Stout and his wife Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter. Stout's sister was the horticulturist Ruth Stout (1884-1980), who wrote several books about gardening techniques.
Though born in Indiana, Stout was primarily raised in Kansas. His family had moved there during his childhood. Stout was encouraged to read by his father, and he reportedly had considerable reading skills before entering grade school. He managed to read the entire Biblical canon at an early age. In 1899, Stout won a state spelling bee championship.
Stout received his secondary education at the Topeka High School (1871-), a public high school located in Topeka, Kansas. The school had a large population of students for much of its early history, and attendance had repeatedly outgrown the capacity of the school facilities. Stout received his college education at the University of Kansas, a public research university located in Lawrence, Kansas.
In 1906, Stout joined the United States Navy. He served for some time as as a yeoman on the presidential yacht of then-president Theodore Roosevelt (term 1901-1909). Stout left the Navy in 1908. He was then drifting from job to job for the next few years. In 1910, Stout published one of his poems in the literary magazine "The Smart Set". He published a few more poems in this magazine, before starting work on prose fiction.
Between 1912 and 1918, Stout published about 40 short stories and novellas in various magazines. He was among the early writers of the pulp magazine "The All-Story Magazine" (1905-1920), which merged with its sister publication "Argosy" in 1920. His stories belonged to various genres, including adventure fiction, detective fiction, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. Two of these early works were murder mystery novellas, indicating his early interest in the genre.
Stout's literary career was not particularly lucrative in the 1910s, so he had to find other ways to earn money. In c. 1916, Stout invented a new school banking system. His system allowed schools to keep track of the money that school children saved in accounts at their school. About 400 schools adopted his system within a few years, and he was paid royalties for its use. Stout earned a small fortune, which allowed him to travel extensively. He gave up writing professionally for a while, though he intended to return to writing once he was wealthy enough to write whatever he pleased.
In 1926, Stout became one of the co-founders of the publishing house Vanguard Press (1926-1988). He served as the company's president from 1926 to 1928. Vanguard's early works focused on radical political publications. It later had a considerable catalog of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and children's literature, though it never became a major publisher. In 1929, Stout lost much of his savings at the start of the Great Depression. By that time, he had already resumed his literary career.
In the second phase of his literary career, Stout wrote the psychological story "How Like a God" (1929) and the political thriller novel "The President Vanishes" (1934). The novel depicted a President of the United States who staged his own disappearance in order to counter a planned military coup by an alliance of fascists and business oligarchs. It generated considerable publicity, and received its own film adaptation.
Stout introduced his popular characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the hit novel "Fer-de-Lance" (1934). The novel also introduced several of their recurring supporting characters. Stout started to increasingly focus on detective fiction, and had abandoned his work on all other genres by 1938. In 1937, he introduced the female detective Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner as a story protagonist. She would later join the recurring cast of the Nero Wolfe series. Stout also introduced the detective protagonists Tecumseh Fox and Alphabet Hicks, but soon lost interest in them.
Between 1940 and 1966, Stout published one new Nero Wolfe novel per year. He rarely published any other works in this period, as the Nero Wolfe series was by far his most lucrative work. His literary output declined considerably in quantity between 1968 and 1975. He published only four new novels in this period. His final Nero Wolfe novel was "A Family Affair" (1975), where Nero learns about the shady activities of one of his closest associates.
Stout died in October 1975, at the age of 88. His work has remained popular and influential among writers. In 2000, he was nominated by Bouchercon XXXI (an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction) for its writer of the century award. He lost the award to Agatha Christie, but was listed as a runner-up, alongside Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Dorothy L. Sayers. In 2014, Stout was inducted posthumously to the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.