Ed McBain, pseudonym of Evan Hunter Biography

American writer, born Salvatore A. Lombino in New York, educated at Hunter College; he served in the US Navy in the Second World War and worked briefly as a teacher. Under his own name Hunter wrote a large amount of popular fiction, plays, and screenplays, including the celebrated novel The Blackboard Jungle (1954), which depicts the violence and racial tension in the New York school system. He is perhaps best known, however, for the long and successful series of detective stories, beginning with Cop Hater (1956), which describe the work of the policemen of the 87th precinct in a fictional city, recognizable as New York. These were among the first, and are still among the best, of what have been called police procedural novels. The numerous titles include Lady Killer (1958), Killer's Wedge (1959), Give the Boys a Great Big Hand (1960), Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here! (1971), Poison (1987), and Romance (1995). McBain also wrote a series of crime novels about a Florida Attorney, Matthew Hope (Goldilocks, 1978; Cinderella, 1986; There Was a Little Girl, 1994), and other fiction under the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, and Richard Marsten.