The directory «Plots»

Hunter Evan (born Salvatore Albert Lombino)
(1926—2005)

Evan Hunter was a prolific American author and screenwriter. Though he was a successful and well-known writer using the Evan Hunter name (a name he legally adopted in 1952), he was perhaps even better known as Ed McBain, a name he used for most of his crime fiction beginning in 1956.

Evan Hunter was born and raised as Salvatore Lombino in New York City, living in East Harlem until the age of 12, at which point his family moved to the Bronx. He attended Olinville Junior High School, then Evander Childs High School before winning an Art Students League scholarship. Later, he was admitted as an art student at Cooper Union.
Lombino served in the Navy in World War II, writing several early short stories while serving aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. However, none of these stories were published until after he had established himself as an author in the 1950s.

After the war, Lombino returned to New York and studied at Hunter College, majoring in English, with minors in dramatics and education. He published a weekly column in the Hunter College newspaper as «S.A. Lombino».

While looking to start a career as a writer, Lombino took a variety of jobs, including 17 days as a teacher at Bronx Vocational High School in September 1950. This experience would later form the basis for his 1954 novel «The Blackboard Jungle».

Soon after his initial short-story sale, Lombino started selling stories under the pen names «Evan Hunter» and «Hunt Collins». The name «Evan Hunter» is generally believed to have been derived from two schools he attended, Evander Childs High School and Hunter College, although the author himself would never confirm that. (He did confirm that the name «Hunt Collins» was derived from Hunter College.)

Lombino legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in May 1952, after an editor told him that a novel he wrote would sell more copies if credited to «Evan Hunter» than it would if it were credited to «S.A. Lombino». Thereafter, he used the name Evan Hunter both personally and professionally.

As Evan Hunter, he wrote books such as «The Blackboard Jungle» (1954), «Come Winter» (1973), and «Lizzie» (1984). He wrote the original screenplay of the 1963 film The Birds for Alfred Hitchcock.

Hunter also wrote a great deal of crime fiction and was advised by his agents that publishing too much fiction under the Hunter by-line, or publishing any crime fiction as Evan Hunter, might weaken his literary reputation. As a consequence, during the 1950s Hunter used the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, and Richard Marsten for much of his crime fiction. His most famous pseudonym, Ed McBain, debuted in 1956 with the first novel in the 87th Precinct crime series.

Hunter himself publicly revealed in 1958 that he was McBain, but he continued to use that pseudonym for several decades—most notably for the 87th Precinct series, and for the Matthew Hope series of novels.

By about 1960, Hunter had retired the pen names of Cannon, Marsten, and Collins. From this point on, crime novels were generally attributed to McBain and other sorts of fiction to Hunter. Reprints of crime-oriented stories and novels written in the 1950s previously attributed to other psuedonyms were issued under the McBain byline. Hunter stated that the division of names allowed readers to know what to expect: McBain novels had a consistent writing style, while Hunter novels were more varied.

In 2000, a novel called «Candyland» appeared that was credited to both Hunter and McBain. The two-part novel opened in Hunter's psychologically-based narrative voice before switching to McBain's customary police procedural style.

Aside from McBain, Hunter used at least two other pseudonyms after 1960. The 1975 novel «Doors» was originally attributed to Ezra Hannon, before being reissued as a work by McBain, and the 1992 novel «Scimitar» was credited to John Abbott.

Hunter died of cancer of the larynx in 2005 at the age of 78 in Weston, Connecticut. He had three sons, one of whom, Richard Hunter, is considered one of the world's leading harmonica virtuosos.

Kazakhstan, 1999, Alfred Hitchcock and scene from «The Birds»

Mozambique, 2010, «The Birds»

Mozambique, 2010, «Psycho», «The Birds»

Sierra Leone, 1997, «The Birds»