Imprint
- The Murder Room
Fiction, Crime & mystery, Classic crime
'Jonathan Latimer is the best kept secret in noir fiction' Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition
With six days remaining until he goes to the electric chair for the murder of his wife, wealthy broker Robert Westland needs help, fast. He insists that he has been framed, and Bill Crane, a private detective with a method and manner all his own, must prove his client's innocence.
In a mixture of the humorous and the macabre, Crane's investigation, set against an evocative Depression-era backdrop, turns up more than a few queer characters - including a tight-lipped valet and a dypsomanic widow - who may or may not know something about who really murdered Mrs Westland.
Jonathan Latimer
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Jonathan Wyatt Latimer (1906-1983) attended school in Arizona and college in Illinois. He was a reporter at the Chicago Herald Examiner and, later, the Chicago Tribune, where he wrote crime and met Al Capone and Bugs Moran. He began writing fiction in the mid-1930s, and his early novels were hardboiled screwball comedies - among the first of their kind - which follow the exploits of hard-drinking yet surprisingly successful private eye, Bill Crane. Later he turned to an altogether darker style, to such an extent that his masterpiece, Solomon's Vineyard, was suppressed for years in the United States and only published in unexpurgated form in the early 1980s. Latimer served in the United States Navy during World War Two, after which he moved to California and worked as a Hollywood screenwriter on shows such as Perry Mason and Columbo. He died of lung cancer in La Jolla, California.
Find a book you’ll love, get our Word Up newsletter
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
