Ed Gorman Books In Order

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Publication Order of Sam McCain Books

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Publication Order of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Books

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Publication Order of Dev Conrad Books

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Ed Gorman was one of the noteworthy authors from America, who was famous for writing books based on the mystery, western fiction, crime fiction, thriller, and horror fiction genres. He was also a renowned anthologist of short stories. As a writer, Gorman wrote and published his stories in almost all the genres. The nonfiction works written by him have appeared in places like Redbook and The New York Times. Author Gorman has contributed to a number of literary magazines and publications such as Mystery Scene, Xero, Cemetery Dance, Black Lizard, and Tales of Zorro anthology. He was born on November 2, 1941 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, The United States, and died on October 14, 2016. Gorman lived for most of his time in his place of birth, Cedar Rapids. For several extended periods, he even stayed in Minneapolis, Chicago, Des Moines, and Minnesota. Author Gorman had married two times. He was married for the first time for 7 years to Catherine Stevens. Later, he married the award winning writer of young adult and children’s books, named Carol Maxwell. Carol and Gorman remained married for 34 years until the death of Gorman in 2016. Prior to the start of his writing career, author Gorman was involved in public relations and advertising. He spent 23 years in these fields, producing some industrial films and writing a few political speeches. He went on to write his first book in the year 1984, which was titled as Rough Cut. Following the tremendous success of this novel, author Gorman decided to quit his job. He dedicated himself towards writing for full time. The other reason behind him being able to focus on his writing career on a full time basis is the full time teaching profession of his wife, Carol. Author Gorman contributed with stories in different fields, however, he thought of himself as a genre writer. During the 1970s, he had won a short story competition, which was sponsored by the Charles Scribner and Sons. One of the editors from this company suggested Gorman to expand the winning story into a full length novel. He started doing it, but got bored after writing for 6 months.

Most of the stories and novels of author Gorman are set in the small towns of the Midwestern regions. For writing his popular Dev Conrad series, he got the inspiration from his years working as an operative in the political field. In addition to writing, Gorman also co-founded the Mystery Scene literary magazine. He served as an editor cum publisher until the year 2002. Even today, the Gormania column appears in the pages of the magazine regularly. Author Gorman was regarded as one of the original writers of crime fiction by the Kirkus Reviews. Likewise, many other critics labeled him as a top class writer in his genre. For most parts of writing career, he was known as a prolific writer, but his graph began to go down after he suffered from multiple myeloma in the year 2002. He had won the Spur Award in the category of the Best Short Fiction for one of his short stories in 1992. Gorman was even nominated for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award in 1995 for his collection of fiction stories called Cages. In 1994, Gorman won the Anthony Award and went on to get nominated for this award for multiple times in the next years. The PEWA has awarded him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The other prestigious nomination for him include the Edgar Award. One of the novels written by author Gorman, The Poker, was made into a movie in 2008 under the direction of Timm McCann. Several of his short stories have also been adapted into short films. Author Gorman used to write under a different set of pen names in addition to his original name including, Daniel Ransom, Robert David Chase, Richard Driscoll, E.J. Gorman, etc.

A popular novel series written by Ed Gorman is called as Sam McCain series. It is comprised of a total of 10 books, which were released between the years 1998 and 2014. Its debut book is titled as ‘The Day the Music Died’. Author Gorman has set the plot of this novel at the time of the year 1958, in Black River Falls. At the beginning of the book, it is shown that at the barber shop of Bill Malley, a lot of talks are going on about communism, marches of civil rights, Martin Luther King, Kennedy, fluoride, etc. In the middle of this setup, Sam McCain is introduced as a 26 year old private investigator and law degree holder. He drives in Ford for 4 hours to attend a performance by his favorite idol of rock and roll music, Buddy Holly. In the next morning, Sam McCain hears the sad news of Holly’s plane crash. Later, Sam comes across Susan Whitney’s dead body in her living room. When he goes upstairs in the huge mansion, he finds Susan’ bullying husband named Richie holding a rifle in his hand and confessing about killing Susan. In his guilt, he kills himself. Sam McCain’s instincts make him feel that Richie did not murder his wife. Before the end of the day, he finds one more corpse in a frozen pond. This time, it is a pregnant teenager.

Another well known book written in the series is entitled ‘Breaking Up is Hard To Do’. It was published in 2004. In the starting sequence, author Gorman has shown that the whole of America lives in fear because of the crisis of the Cuban Missiles. But, the citizens try to get their lives going and hope for the crisis to end soon. A beautiful woman named Karen Hastings is found dead due to strangulation in the shelter of the gubernatorial candidate named Ross Murdoch. In order to look into the matter, Ross hires Sam McCain. He wants Sam to find out the real killer and help him get his named cleared in the murder. The task seems pretty much impossible for Sam McCain. He finds out that Karen knew very much about the powerful Ross Murdoch as well as the community’s 3 other pillars, who shared her as their mistress. And with the information, Karen Hastings was blackmailing all 4 of them. The case keeps getting dirtier with the uncovering of new secrets. And when the killer takes the life of another victim, Sam thinks that it is high time now to catch him. He wonders whether the 4 men who had sexual relationship with Karen were involved in her murder too or there is someone else who is playing with the lives of these men. The book turned out to be one of the finest by author Gorman as it helped him to achieve more success as a writer of mystery books.