Jonathan Latimer

Jonathan Latimer ( born October 23, 1906 in Chicago, † 23 June 1983) was an American author and screenwriter. He gained a certain notoriety by his crime novels about the private detective William Crane and his novel Solomon's Vineyard, which is considered secret classic of its genre.

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Life

Jonathan Latimer was born on October 23, 1906 in Chicago. He grew up in Arizona and Illinois, where he attended Arizona 's Mesa School and Knox College in Galesburg. He began his career as a reporter before he went shortly thereafter to writing. In the 1930s, he wrote five novels about the private detective William Crane, a martini -soaked representative of the " hedonistic wing " of the hard-boiled private investigators ( as the self-representation of the main character ), and from the late 1930s, five books with other main characters.

His first books had a strong influence of Dashiell Hammett, his 1941 published work Solomon 's Vineyard ( Solomon's Vineyard ), however, was very independent; the slight tone of Crane series had disappeared and was replaced by bleak gray and violent scenes. The work earned him a lot of trouble with higher authorities, only in 1988 it was allowed to be released in the U.S. in the original version. From 1938 created for Paramount and Metro -Goldwyn -Mayer screenplays for crime films, including for The Glass Key (1942 ) and The night has a thousand eyes (1948 ). He also wrote for the TV series Lone Wolf and Charlie Chan.

For most of the Second World War (1942-1945) served Latimer in the Navy, after which he moved to La Jolla, California, where he met Raymond Chandler; also he had a very quick and successful re-entry into the work as a screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, then Latimer worked for television, including as a writer for crime series Perry Mason Columbo. His practice he continued until his death from lung cancer in 1983.

All of his books have been translated into German and published (except for night of horror ) when Diogenes Verlag.

Filmography

Works

William Crane series

Other works

Revised version under the title The Fifth Grave ( 1950)