The name Ed Lacy was the most successful pseudonym of writer Len Zinberg; his other pen name was Steve April, which he used for one book. Zinberg began his career as an aspiring writer of serious fiction and wrote at first under his own name, but economic forces of the twentieth-century publishing market channeled him into the realm of the hard-boiled mystery, and as Ed Lacy he wrote thirty novels. As Lacy, he won an Edgar Award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America for Room to Swing (1957), a novel in which he pioneered the use of an African American private detective. Critic Marvin Lachman points out that Lacy, a white man married to a black woman, was the only American mystery writer of his time to consistently focus on problems of racial minorities. However, while Lacy made a tolerable living and received encouraging reviews through...