Ed McBain eBooks
Ed McBain was the pen name of author Evan Hunter, an American crime fiction novelist. While he also wrote under his legal name, he was best known for his work as McBain.
Hunter was born in New York City in 1926. He began writing while he served in the Navy in World War II. His career as a writer would come several years later, after he returned to New York and earned a degree in English and Psychology from Hunter College.
He began work as an editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in 1951. The same year, he published his first short story. The following year he legally changed his name from his birth name, Salvatore Lombino, to Evan Hunter, on the advice of another editor.
Using his new name, he published his first novel, 1954’s The Blackboard Jungle. As a prolific writer, he was again advised to work under a different name. Through the 1950s, he wrote under ten different names. Ed McBain, the best known of these pseudonyms, first appeared in 1956, when Cop Hater was published. The novel, part of his 87th Precinct series, was followed by dozens of other McBain novels.
During his writing career, he also wrote screenplays, most notably that of Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds. His own fiction was adapted for both film and television. By Hunter’s death in 2005, he had written over 100 novels, plus numerous short story collections, screenplays, and two autobiographies.
