Richie jack

Born in Milwaukee on February 26, 1922. He graduated from high school and enrolled at Milwaukee State Pedagogical University. During the Second World War he was drafted into the US Army and served for two years in the central part of the Pacific Ocean, having spent most of this period on Kwajalein Island, where he, in order to pass the time, read a large number of detective stories and fell in love with this genre ^[1] . After the war, he returned to his hometown and, unable to recover at the university, worked for some time in his father’s store. However, the work of the tailor did not appeal to Richie, and he decided to make a living by writing stories. Soon, Irma Richie, also a short story writer, introduced her son to her literary agent Larry Sternig, to whom Richie handed over his recently written story Always the Season . Sternig instantly appreciated the literary talent of a novice writer and in 1953 sold the story to the New York newspaper New York Daily News ^[2] .

In 1954, Richie married the writer Rita Krohne, who, under the name of her husband, published a series of historical adventure novels for children ^[1] . After a divorce in 1978, Richie moved to Fort Atkinson (Wisconsin). ^[2]

Wrote the only Tiger Island novel. Jack Ritchie died of a heart attack on April 25, 1983 ^[3] . He was buried in a military cemetery in Milwaukee on April 27, 1983.

Among the writers who influenced his work, Richie mentioned Agatha Christie , John D. MacDonald , Raymond Chandler and Donald Westlake ^[4] . His talent, in turn, was appreciated by Alfred Hitchcock , Anthony Bucher , Edward Hoch and Westlake ^[5] .

Jack Ritchie was a prolific author of short stories that were published in various periodicals ^[6] . Throughout the 1950s, his stories were published in Manhunt magazine, as well as in publications such as The Philadelphia Inquirer , Stag , New York Daily Mirror , Smashing Detective Stories, and Good Housekeeping . In total, over 500 Richie's stories were published ^[7] . The largest number of works appeared on the pages of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine : 123 stories over 23 years (1959-1982) ^[8] . The stories published in AHMM were used in the popular television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents ; others formed the basis of " Unfinished stories ". The story, entitled The Green Heart, was filmed by Elaine May in the film " New Leaf " (1971) with the participation of May and Walter Mattau . The short story "When the Emily" ( The Absence of Emily ), awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Prize in 1982, was filmed twice.

In the early 1970s, Ritchie created the images of the vampire detective Cardula (an acronym for Dracula ) and detective Henry Turnbuckle, which he used in his most famous stories. His novel Tiger Island, which focuses on the problems of human relationships, was published in 1987, four years after the author’s death. Other works continue to be published posthumously - The Fabricator story was published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in May 2009. Currently, each issue of the weekly newspaper "New Century" publishes one story of the writer.