Bill,
Re your question below:
> What's the word on [Bill] Ballinger?
An Iowa native, Ballinger worked in advertising and
broadcasting in Chicago and New York, and had traveled
extensively all over the world by the time he settled in
Southern California to break into screenwriting.
In addition to the two Barr Breed PI novels, he also wrote,
during the 1960s espionage boom, a series of five books about
Joaquin Hawks, an American Indian CIA agent operating in
Southeast Asia.
Three stand-alone books, PORTRAIT IN SMOKE, THE TOOTH AND THE
NAIL, and THE LONGEST SECOND are generally regarded as his
best novels. They were collected in an omnibus volume
entitled TRYPTYCH.
Ballinger was a prolific screenwriter, credited with scripts
for eight feature films and over 150 teleplays. He won an
Edgar in the TV category for his adaptation of the Stanley
Ellin short story "The Day of the Bullet," which was shown on
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. The mid-50s noir PUSHOVER, in
which Fed MacMurray portrays a crooked cop, was partially
based on Ballinger's novel RAFFERTY (the other credited
source material was Thomas Walsh's THE NIGHT WATCH).
Kevin has a pretty good piece on the Breed series in his
"Thrilling Detective" site, as well as entries on some of
Ballinger's stand-alone PIs.
JIM DOHERTY
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