Robert Joseph Randisi | |
---|---|
Born | Brooklyn, New York | August 24, 1951
Died | October 6, 2024 73) | (aged
Pen name | J. R. Roberts |
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | American |
Genre | Detective fiction, Western fiction |
Notable works | The Gunsmith series; The Rat Pack series |
Notable awards | Lifetime Achievement from The Private Eye Writers of America; Lifetime Achievement from Western Fictioneers; Lifetime Achievement from The Short Mystery Fiction Society; John Seigenthaler Humanitarian Award from Killer Nashville; Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southwest Mystery Convention |
Robert Joseph Randisi (August 24, 1951 - October 6, 2024) was an American author, editor and screenwriter who wrote in the detective and Western genres.
Randisi authored more than 650 published books and edited more than 30 anthologies of short stories. Booklist magazine said he "may be the last of the pulp writers." For more than three decades starting around January 1982, he had at least one book published every month. In 1984 he wrote 27 books in 12 months.[ citation needed ]
He co-founded and edited Mystery Scene magazine and co-founded the American Crime Writers League. He founded The Private Eye Writers of America in 1981, where he created the Shamus Award. [1] He co-founded The American Crime Writers League; co-founded Western Fictioneers, and co-created The Peacemaker award.[ citation needed ]
He co-wrote several mystery novels with soap opera actress Eileen Davidson: Death in Daytime (2008), Dial Emmy for Murder (2009), Diva Las Vegas (2010), and Swinging in the Rain (2011). [2] He collaborated with actor, and poker commentator Vince Van Patten on "The Picasso Flop" and 'The Judgment Fold."
Notable characters appearing in some of his novels include "Miles Jacoby", "Joe Keough", "Nick Delvecchio", "Gil and Claire Hunt", "Truxton Lewis", "Eddie G." and The Rat Pack. [3] As J. R. Roberts, he wrote over 500 adult westerns featuring his character "Clint Adams - The Gunsmith". [4]
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their cheap nature. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder cases. From 1929 to 1971, Dannay and Lee wrote around forty novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Avram Davidson was an American writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and an Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine short story award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".
William Anthony Parker White, better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett".
Michael Joseph Connelly is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bestselling author of 38 novels and one work of non-fiction, with over 74 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1997 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer starred Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century and Louis L'Amour from the mid-20th century. The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as Bonanza. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside a few west American states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books.
Eileen Marie Davidson is an American actress, author, television personality and former model. Davidson is best known for her roles in soap operas as Kristen DiMera and Susan Banks on NBC's Days of Our Lives and Ashley Abbott on CBS's The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer with more than one hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction and other genres. Westlake created two professional criminal characters who each starred in a long-running series: the relentless, hardboiled Parker, and John Dortmunder, who featured in a more humorous series.
Laura Lippman is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker.
Otto Penzler is an American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Terry Harknett was a British author. He was author of almost 200 books, mostly pulp novels in the western and crime genres. He wrote under an array of pseudonyms, including George G. Gilman, Joseph Hedges, William M. James, Charles R. Pike, Thomas H. Stone, Frank Chandler, Jane Harman, Alex Peters, William Pine, William Terry, James Russell and David Ford. On at least one occasion he wrote as a ghostwriter for Peter Haining. Some bibliographies, e.g. Fantastic Fiction, list Adam Hardy as one of Harknett's pseudonyms, in fact a nom de plume of Kenneth Bulmer. This is an error resulting from incorrect copyright information printed in one of the Edge westerns.
Lee Goldberg is an American author, screenwriter, publisher and producer known for his bestselling novels Lost Hills and True Fiction and his work on a wide variety of TV crime series, including Diagnosis: Murder, A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Hunter, Spenser: For Hire, Martial Law, She-Wolf of London, SeaQuest, 1-800-Missing, The Glades and Monk.
Julie Smith is an American mystery writer, the author of nineteen novels and several short stories. She received the 1991 Edgar Award for Best Novel for her sixth book, New Orleans Mourning (1990).
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was an American writer and short fiction anthologist. He published in almost every genre, but is best known for his work in the crime, mystery, western, and horror fields. His non-fiction work has been published in such publications as The New York Times and Redbook.
S. J. Rozan is an American architect and writer of detective fiction and thrillers, based in New York City. She also co-writes a paranormal thriller series under the pseudonym Sam Cabot with Carlos Dews.
Mystery Scene is an American magazine, first published in 1985, that covers the crime and mystery genre with a mix of articles, profiles, criticism, and extensive reviews of books, films, TV, short stories, audiobooks, and reference works.
Susan Dunlap is an American writer of mystery novels and short stories. Her novels have mostly appeared in one of four series, each with its own sleuthing protagonist: Vejay Haskell, Jill Smith, Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, or Darcy Lott. Through 2020, more than two dozen of Dunlap's book-length mysteries have appeared in print. She has also edited crime fiction and has contributed to anthologies, including A Woman's Eye (1991), and to periodicals such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Her short story "Checkout" won a Macavity Award and an Anthony Award in 1994.
John Curran is an Irish literary scholar and archivist, best known as an expert on the work of Dame Agatha Christie, English author of detective fiction and the world's bestselling novelist. He was born in Dublin and for years edited the Agatha Christie newsletter, subscriptions to which are handled through the author's official website. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Christie at Trinity College. He served as a National Trust consultant during the restoration of Christie's Devon residence, the Greenway Estate.