He died last Tuesday, January 27 at the age of 81. have confirmed that he passed away “peacefully, with his wife Karyn by his side, after a long illness.” The American was the author of a series of novels that had detective Lew Griffin as the protagonist, and of , starring Ryan Gosling.
His career began in the sixties when he wrote science fiction for magazines, a time in which he sold several stories to writers such as Damon Knight and . When he was around 25 years old he was invited to London to work on New Worldsjust when the work took a leap towards large format. It was at that time that he published Kazoo (1967), his first science fiction story.
“The crime novel is an essential part of American literature of the last century,” he commented to this newspaper. Then he was critical of the situation in his country: “Racism is the great sin of the United States,” he stated, adding that “the barrier of civility has been broken. Now, after a long time, things are said that could not be said before. Perhaps there is no solution.”
During his career he published 18 novels, multiple collections of stories, poems, essays and musicology books; He was also a critic, biographer and translator of novels. He also worked as a reviewer for newspapers such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post; He was a literary columnist for Boston Globe and of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His career earned him the Bouchercon prize, the Hammett for literary excellence in police writing and the Grand Prix de Littérature policière. In 2013 he acknowledged to this newspaper that his inspirations are many: “I am influenced by everything. European and American science fiction films from the fifties, Theodore Sturgeon, Julio Cortazar, Albert Camus (especially The foreigner),Pablo Neruda, Raymond Queneau, Hammett and Chandler, Faulkner… You have to see the shelves of my library.”
