Date of birth: 13 April 1911
Date of death: 14 September 1958
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John McPartland was born in Chicago, Illinois. He lived only a few years after becoming one of Gold Medal's most popular authors of the sexy action thrillers now called "noir fiction". He wrote eleven noir novels, beginning with Love Me Now (1952) and ending with The Last Night (1959), which was published posthumously. Only his seventh novel, No Down Payment (1957), came out in hardcover. Like many writers of pulp thrillers, McPartland was prolific, and most of his stories were close to the contemporary bone. He turned out nearly two books a year, and the lag between their fictional plots and real life was seldom more than a year or two. At the time of his death, he was also working as a Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote screenplays for The Wild Party (1956), No Time to Be Young (1957), and Street of Sinners (1957).

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