Related: How Old Was Your Favorite Mystery Author When They Published Their First Book? On the blog Glorious Trash, Sam Hunter is described as, “Mike Hammer lampooned to an absurd degree a loudmouthed, arrogant, violent steamroller of a private eye.” Never one to shy away from either excess or satire-see that Runa Fairleigh book-Morse’s Sam Hunter divided critics, “most of whom complained about the utter excess of it all, others who figured out it was all a parody” ( Glorious Trash). Originally published in 1982, The Big Enchilada introduced readers to Sam Hunter, the only one of Morse’s returning characters.

Related: How Albert Nussbaum Went From Criminal To Crime Writer And speaking of those novels, if you want to get a taste of the author’s equally-eccentric oeuvre, we have just the books for you! Honestly, such an eccentric character seems like he could have come out of, well, an L. He also enjoys bird-watching, having checked more than 1,500 different species off his list. The truth or otherwise of such claims will simply have to remain another mystery…īesides writing, Morse has worked as a sculptor for many years.

Morse actually is Runa Fairleigh, and, as such, is the author of the work himself. Unless, of course, you believe the naysayers who claim that L. Morse hasn’t limited his literary activities to merely writing books, either-or has he? In 1984, Morse discovered an unpublished manuscript by Runa Fairleigh, and helped usher An Old-Fashioned Mystery into print. It earned Morse an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. His 1981 follow-up to The Flesh Eaters was The Old Dick, a story of an aging private eye who comes out of retirement for one last job. Related: Vital Tips for Aspiring Mystery and Thriller Writers

detective Sam Hunter, who “makes Dirty Harry look like Mother Theresa,” according to the New York Daily News.

His best-known tales, however, are crime novels, including two starring the L.A. He’s also written books on cult cinema from the ‘80s. He made his literary debut with the 1979 publication of The Flesh Eaters, a tale of horror and brutal crime, chronicling the real-life story of the Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean and his clan. He moved to Toronto in the 1960s, where, among other things, he worked as an administrator at the University of Toronto and had a brief turn in educational television-though readers of some of his more graphic novels might be scandalized to hear it. Growing up in Los Angeles-the city whose initials he shares-he got two degrees in English Lit and worked a variety of jobs. Though he’s best known today as an Edgar Award-winning writer of hard-boiled crime stories, Larry Alan Morse has worn a lot of hats over the years.

Flesh Eaters by L.A. Morse