I second the referenced link
(
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/monkshould/ERJohnson.html)to
an excellent piece on E Richard Johnson by Sue Feder. It is
really a fine piece of research and summary of Johnson's life
and career.
If there is a note of surprise in this it is because I knew
Sue Feder for years and had no idea of her interest in such a
hardboiled writer, much less her correspondence with him. She
was known for her promotions of and writings about historical
mysteries--as witness the Ellis Peters collection THE TRINITY
CAT published by Crippen & Landru, which Sue co-edited. I
would have loved to have talked to her about Johnson, who I
learned from her article was called Emil by his friends but
by the time I read her piece she was dead from cancer at a
too early age.
Johnson's best work is powerful stuff indeed reflecting his
intimate knowledge of a hard life of crime, which he
apparently couldn't escape even after he made it with a good
publisher and won a parole.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "wolansky2006"
<wolansky2006@...> wrote:
>
> I tend to browse in local thrifts, one of the few
options for books up
> here in the north. I recently came across a novel by
E. Richard
> Johnson . MONGO'S BACK IN TOWN turns out to be his
second novel. The
> first, SILVER STREET won the EDGAR AWARD.
>
> With some digging, I came acorss one good reerence
for Johnson:
>
>
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/monkshould/ERJohnson.html
>
> There is also an inteview on a French noir
site.
>
> After some further digging, I managed to locate
copies of all fo his
> work, including a non-fiction survival book. Too bad
he is not better
> known. Granted, not all the novels are good. One is
pretty bad but
> the rest do have much to recommend them.
>
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