Books by Al Clark

If an umpire could steal the show in a Major League game, the author might well have been the one to do it. Tough but fair, in his thirty years as a professional umpire he took on some of baseball's great umpire baiters, while ejecting any number of the game's elite - once tearing a hamstring in the process. This book tells his story.

Four years after writing his first novel, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler found himself sitting in an office at Paramount Studios earning a weekly salary that amounted to almost half of what he had received film rights to his second novel, Farewell My Lovely. Despite the considerable rewards, he was always uncertain, often disgruntled, never at ease. Raymond Chandler in Hollywood is an entertaining and comprehensive assessment of Chandler's turbulent association with Hollywood, both as a screenwriter whose credits included Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia and Strangers on a Train and as the provider of source material -- his six filmed novels have so far yielded ten movies. Illustrated with over 100 rare stills, this book provides a special insight into the work of the world's most acclaimed writer of detective fiction.