I've mentioned before the extraordinary job Jeff Pierce does not just with The Rap Sheet but his other site Killer Covers. This time he covers the life and career of William Campbell Gault. I got to know Bill reasonably well during the eighties and into the nineties. A more wonderful guy is impossible to imagine. No guile, no ego tantrums. I came to see him as my uncle. He had a lot of tales of other writers, 98% positive. He always said that one of his regrets was that the falling out he had with his old pal John D. McDonald. JDM was a hawk about Viet Nam, Bill agin it completely. They finally made up about a year before Bill died but that the political divide ran deep.
The guy was a great writer (Don't Cry For Me belongs in any top ten private eye list) and a working class hero.
I can hear him laughing with pleasure about Jeff Pierce's fine overview. He woulda loved it.
Read the whole article here:
http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/
1 comment:
Appreciate the tip, Ed. Gault was my favorite writer when I was a kid, and I was mighty pleased to discover he'd written grown-up books too. Had a long talk with him at an ancient Bouchercon, and he was indeed a great guy.
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