Bruce Crowther

My writing career began almost by accident. Although books were always around the house - and I especially liked crime fiction by James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich and, top of my list, Raymond Chandler - I never thought to try writing. Instead, I worked for many years in industry and then financial services, jobs with one thing in common. They were boring and I compensated by reading endlessly (except when I watched films or listened to music) and also by living another life inside my head. There, I made up stories influenced by my favourite books and films, the latter being films noir, some of which were based on works by those same hard-boiled authors.

When boredom with my working life eventually reached breaking point, I cast around for an escape and decided to try writing a crime novel. They were easy to read, so they must be easy to write. Right? That was my first mistake, but I struggled on and a few months later it was done. What next? A copy of The Writer’s Handbook and a pin found an agent: Carolyn Whitaker. Off the typescript went, and a few weeks later Carolyn phoned me, told me that my novel was un-publishable, and then spent a couple of hours telling me why. That two-hour telephone call remains high among the best things that ever happened to me; it was educational, important, invaluable and unforgettable.

Having begun a second book, I now dumped it and started again, incorporating all the advice Carolyn had given me, and when I was done sent it to her. A few weeks later, she sold it to a leading London publisher. Suddenly, I was a writer of crime novels, one of which, The Rose Medallion, was serialized by BBC Television (and I also wrote a few episodes for a popular television crime series). Then, I was commissioned to write a non-fiction book and the result was Hollywood Faction: Reality And Myth In The Movies, followed, not surprisingly, by Film Noir: Reflections In A Dark Mirror (nominated for an Edgar). Then came a commission to write on another of my abiding interests, jazz. There followed more books on jazz and films and my crime writing was pushed aside and when I became a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Popular Music - writing several thousand biographical entries - books of all kinds were edged out.

After several years I began to weary of this kind of work, not through boredom but because I had drifted into a world where research dominated. Of course research is extremely important, but the thing I love most is the act of writing so I decided to go back to crime fiction. There, research is still needed, but the ratio is happier. Unfortunately, in the years that had elapsed any reputation I might have enjoyed had faded and when Carolyn, my agent, died I realized that getting back into mainstream crime writing meant another approach was needed. Eventually deciding to go the once-denigrated self-publishing route, I have since added further books, bringing the total to forty-eight with two more on the way 2023.

All my non-fiction books appear under my real name, Bruce Crowther, as do most of the works of fiction although some are under the pseudonym James Grant and one as by Michael Ansara.