I was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, but after a long journey, which took me to Utica, New York, Europe, back to Pennsylvania, to New York City, Syracuse, and Massachusetts where I finished college, I finally settled in Florida when I was discharged from the army during WWII. If it wasn’t for my wife submitted my first short story, who knows where I might have ended up? That story was published in Storymagazine and I received my first check as a professional writer; a whopping twenty-five bucks.
         During the time I bounced around, I managed to get my MBA from Harvard. What I learned about business and economics I used in the plotting of several of my mysteries, which involved business swindles. Before I began writing novels, I pounded out more than 500 short stories and sold most of those to various magazines. My first novel, The Brass Cupcake, was published in 1950. I followed it with some science fiction and then in 1953, I found my niche in the hard-boiled detective genre. In 1964, I created a protagonist I could relate to and kept him around for twenty-one books. The guy was serious, cynical, and had a string of women running through his life. He lived on a houseboat he named Busted Flush, in honor of the game that won him the boat.

         My novel The Executioners was made into a movie (different title) in 1962 staring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.