Raoul Whitfield

Born in New York in November 1896 and dying in January 1945, he built a remarkably productive career in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He wrote adventure, aviation, and especially hardboiled crime fiction, publishing hundreds of short stories and serials in pulp magazines as well as several books.

He is closely associated with Black Mask, where his lean style and memorable characters made him a notable contemporary of the great pulp crime writers. Among his best-known work are the Jo Gar stories, featuring a Filipino detective, along with novels such as Green Ice and Death in a Bowl.

Although he is less widely read now than some of his peers, his work still stands out for its pace, atmosphere, and importance in the development of American noir and detective fiction.