author
Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield
A sharp, fast-moving voice from the early hard-boiled era, this American crime writer helped shape the gritty style that made Black Mask magazine famous. His stories and novels, including Green Ice and Death in a Bowl, still stand out for their speed, toughness, and atmosphere.
1 Audiobook
Ride 'em and weep
by Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield
About the author
Born in New York City in 1896, Raoul Whitfield wrote adventure, aviation, and crime fiction, building a remarkably busy career from the 1920s into the mid-1930s. He published more than 300 short stories and serials in pulp magazines, along with nine books, and became especially associated with the rise of hard-boiled detective fiction.
Whitfield was a major contributor to Black Mask, the legendary magazine that also published writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. He is best known for novels such as Green Ice (1930) and Death in a Bowl (1931), and for characters including Ben Jardinn. His work is often remembered for its lean prose, restless energy, and early noir mood.
He died in Los Angeles in 1945. Although he is less widely known today than some of his contemporaries, Whitfield is still valued by crime-fiction readers as one of the important pioneers of the hard-boiled tradition.