Dan J. Marlowe

Dan James Marlowe (July 10, 1914 – August 26, 1986) was an American writer of crime fiction. The Name of the Game Is Death (Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1962), about a fast-shooting, casually violent bank robber, is both Marlowe's most popular and most critically acclaimed work. (Originally a one-off novel, it was later expanded into a series subtitled "Drake: The Man with Nobody's Face.") In 2005, Marlowe was praised as the "hardest of the hardboiled" by Stephen King.

Charles Kelly's Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe (2012) tells the real-life story of Marlowe, his amnesia, and his entanglements with bank robber Albert Frederick Nussbaum and murderer Bobby Randell Wilcoxson.

Works

Novels

Fastback "easy readers" 1983: Janie 1984: No Witnesses, A Game for Fools 1985: Claire, The Comeback, Game Day, Redmond's Shot, Turk, Death in Any Language, Pension Plan 1986: Small Town Beat, No Loose Ends 1987: The Devlin Affair, Ship of Doom, Double the Glory, The Hitter, The Mudder, The Sixth Man, The Super Upset, Big-Top Tragedy, Deadly Torrent, Quake 8.1