Authors and Creators
Michael Avallone
(AKA Mike Avallone, Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Mark Dane, Steve Michaels, Edwina Noone, Priscilla Dalton, John Patrick, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dorothea Nile, Sidney Stuart, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Vance Stanton, Max Walker, Lee Davis Willoughby)
(1925-1999)

Michael Angelo Avallone was born in New York, one of 17 children. "I've been writing since I discovered pencils," Avallone once said. Certainly, his output suggests he started getting published soon after.

After stints in the army and as a stationery salesman, he began to write. He got his start in the sports pulps in the fifties, and soon moved on to editing men's magazines (an amazing twenty-seven of them in the four year period from 1954 to 1959. He also edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter from 1962 to 1965.

He was a remarkably rapid and prolific writer, the self-proclaimed "Fastest Typewriter in the East" and "The King of the Paperbacks," who claimed to have written over a thousand works, almost all paperback originals, including three dozen mystery novels featuring his alter-ego private eye hero Ed Noon. He also wrote romance and gothic novels, horror and science fiction, soft core porn, children's books, poetry, essays, movie reviews, and a ton of TV and film novelisations. He was published by Gold Medal and Midwood, Beacon and Popular, Curtis and Paperjacks, Beacon and Scholastic, Avon and Signet. He often said he would rather write than sleep or eat. The evidence seems to bear him out.

He wrote so many books, under so many pseudonyms, that even apparent misspellings like Mike Avalione and Michael Avalone soon became pen names. He wrote at least sixty-two novels and novelizations under his own name, many with series characters, such as April Dancer, Ed Noon and Satan Sleuth, at least three novels as Nick Carter (with valerie Moolman), two novels as Sidney Stuart, three gothics as Priscilla Dalton, twelve gothic novels as Edwina Noone, five gothic novels as Dorothea Nile, five gothic novels as Jean-Anne de Pre, four novels as Vance Stanton, at least twenty erotic novels as Troy Conway, featuring a horny super spy named Rod Damon, A.K.A. "Capitalism's favorite tool," nine "men's adventure" novels as Stuart Jason (all with series character "The Butcher"), at least three collections of short stories, and at least thirty novels and novelizations unrelated to the above series. He also wrote original novels based on television shows, including The Partridge Family (8 titles), The Man From UNCLE (the first book), The Girl From UNCLE (2 books), Hawaii 5-0 (2 books) and Mannix. The guy just loved to write.

And he was quick. He once completed a novel in a day and a half. One story goes that he wrote a 1,500-word short story in 20 minutes, while dining in a New York restaurant. One year, he supposedly churned out 27 books. Avallone was a tireless committee volunteer for the MWA, serving on the Board of Directors, as well as editing the newsletter. He was also the chairman of its awards, television and motion picture committees. And he was always quick with a quip. Rumours have it was the Avallone who coined the "Father, Son, & Holy Ghost" line to describe Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald, way back in the early sixties.

He was also legendary for being quick to take offense and quick to lash out, and for his high opinion of himself. An original; a seemingly tireless letter-writer and self-promoter, his own biggest fan, a romping stomping ornery cuss, often charging off in two or three directions at once, at times bitter and spiteful, prickly, opinionated, pounding out white hot attacks on anyone he felt had failed to acknowledge their debt and pay their proper respects to him (never mind that some of these writers never READ him) or in some other way slighted him. He was especially venomous towards more successful writers, notably, supposedly, Stephen King who, Avallone exclaimed at every chance, based every thing he ever wrote on an a Robert Bloch novel.

"A few times," Avallone's son, David, admits, "he substituted himself for Bloch, but this was mostly to drive King fans into rage. Most of his "ornery cussedness" had a pretty simple intention; to piss people off and get attention. Once when I was a child and we were in London, he calmly threw into an interview that he thought Arthur Conan-Doyle must have known exactly who Jack the Ripper was... otherwise he wouldn't have avoided writing about it. This managed to get him into all the other papers, with headlines like "Yank Writer Says Sherlock Was Jack The Ripper"... My point being (one that seems to be lost on a lot of folks) I don't think Dad particularly believed King plagarized him any more than he believed Conan-Doyle knew the Ripper. He just got a huge kick out of the reaction it caused when he said it."

Certainly, Avallone had a high opinion of his own work. After his death, the quips and stories rolled out. "He never wrote a book he didn't like." "He rewrote one book three times, and sold each version, once as a mystery, once as a romance and once as a horror story, to three different publishers." "In making a list of the ten best mysteries of all time, he included one of his own books." "Reading him may have sometimes been a dubious pleasure, and dealing with him an onerous task, but I was glad I knew him. He was his own best character."

His was known for his wacko plots, his hilariously fragmented sentences, his penchant for improvised, nonsensical plots, his love for movie and baseball trivia, his complete allegiance to a sort of virtual unreality in whatever field he chose to write in was steamrollered by his enthusiasm and his own energetic albeit somewhat skewered version of the world, not to mention his penchant for truly pain-inducing puns, as evidenced by such titles as The Cunning Linguist, Turn the Other Sheik and The Alarming Clock.

Due to the sheer quantity of his work, something had to give, and sometimes that might have been logic, but not to worry! Don't understand this sub-plot, this short story, this book? Wait a moment, here comes another!

Bill Pronzini devoted whole chapters to him, in both Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek, his twin odes to alternative classics. Avallone was, indeed, the King of the Cheese, and at least of somewhere. Indeed, more than one wag has suggested that Avallone may not have even been of this planet. Critic M. Francis Nevin, in his essay on Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, dubbed the place Avallone apparently lived in the "Nooniverse,"and he wasn't far off.

He passed away recently, at the age of 74, in his sleep at his Los Angeles home. In a better world, or at least one in which he was allowed to write the rules, it would have been while sitting at his beloved typewriter.

UNDER OATH

TESTIMONY

NOVELS
(This list is woefully incomplete. I'll be adding to it as I go along, but if anyone can suggest a few omissions, I'd be happy to add them...)

SHORT STORIES

COLLECTIONS

RADIO

FILM/WEB SERIAL

AUDIO

RELATED LINKS

Thanks to Chris Mills and David Spencer for tossing a few more in the pot, and a very special thanks to David Avallone and Fran Tulip Avallone for their kind help and support.

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