An author of Westerns and a successful screenwriter, W. R. Burnett is best known for his hard-boiled crime fiction. With the popular and critical success of the novels Little Caesar (1929) and The Asphalt Jungle (1949), he all but created two popular subgenres: the gangster novel and the criminal "caper" story. These novels, along with a third, High Sierra (1940), inspired movies that became classics of film noir.

For the first twenty years of his life, William Riley Burnett led a sheltered existence. He was born in Springfield, Ohio, on 25 November 1899, scion of a family that had long been prominent in state politics. His grandfather had served as the mayor of Columbus, while his father, Theodore Addison Burnett, was a chief aide to Governor James Cox. His mother was the former Emily Upson Colwell Morgan. Growing up, young Bill Burnett enjoyed all the privileges and pleasures of a wealthy Midwestern household...