Eugene Izzi / Nick Gaitano

Eugene Izzi was a renowned American novelist of mystery, crime fiction, and thriller novels. He was best known for his book called The Criminalist and for adopting the hard-boiled style to write his novels. Some of the popular standalone books written by Izzi include Invasions, The Take, The Booster, Bad Guys, Prowlers, Safe Harbor, King of the Hustlers, The Prime Roll, A Matter of Honor, etc. Izzi remained a citizen of Chicago throughout his life and set most of his novels in that city. He was deeply influenced by the popular hard-boiled style of authors Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane and chose to use it in his novels as well. In spite of achieving moderate success in his writing career, Izzi became a popular named because of the unusual circumstances in which he died. He was an alcoholic and had a marriage full of struggles. The people who knew him well say that Izzi took to writing as a kind of self-therapy.