Evan Hunter, 78; Wrote ‘The Blackboard Jungle’

Evan Hunter, the prolific author who wrote the best-selling novel “The Blackboard Jungle� and, under the better-known pen name Ed McBain, wrote the enduringly popular 87th Precinct detective series, has died. He was 78.

Hunter, who also wrote the screenplay for the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller “The Birds,� died of cancer of the larynx Wednesday at his home in Weston, Conn., Jane Gelfman, his agent, reported.

In a more than 50-year literary career that began with writing short stories for pulp magazines, Hunter wrote more than 100 books that have reportedly sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

His 1954 novel “The Blackboard Jungle,� about a teacher attempting to deal with rebellious and violent students in an unruly urban high school, was Hunter’s breakthrough book.

Based on his stint teaching English in two New York vocational high schools, “The Blackboard Jungle� was an instant critical and commercial success and led to the 1955 movie starring Glenn Ford.

A year after the novel’s publication, Hunter was approached by an editor at Pocket Books who wanted him to create a new mystery series.

In the process of creating his gritty, critically acclaimed series about a big-city detective squad in the fictional 87th Precinct, he created his literary alter ego, Ed McBain.

“I didn’t want to mislead people into believing they were buying a mainstream novel, and then opening the book to find a man with an ax sticking out of his head,� he explained in a 1990 interview with the St. Petersburg Times.

In writing the series, Hunter said in a 1995 interview with the Boston Globe, “The central idea was to make the stationhouse the star. I wanted a cast of characters that would act as an ensemble.�

Beginning with “Cop Hater� in 1956, 53 Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels have been published. A final book in the series, “Fiddlers,� will be published by Otto Penzler Books, an imprint of Harcourt, in September.

“He’s the guy who defined the police-procedural novel,� Otto Penzler, a well-known mystery expert and publisher, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. “He didn’t quite invent it, but he certainly made it popular.

“As anybody who watches television can tell you, ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘Hill Street Blues’ are absolute rip-offs of the 87th Precinct series -- or heavily influenced, if you want to be polite.�

Penzler said Hunter “had the rare ability that very few writers have of writing great characters, great dialogue and he was a terrific plotter.�

Hunter, who continued writing until about March, had already delivered a short story collection that Penzler will publish early next spring, and one more novel in his Women in Jeopardy suspense mystery series, “Becca in Jeopardy,� is also due out next year.

Under the McBain pen name, Hunter also wrote a series revolving around Florida attorney Matthew Hope, as well as stand-alone thrillers.

For his 2001 novel “Candyland,� Hunter actually shared a byline with his literary alter ego. He wrote the first half as Hunter and the second half, dealing with police procedures used to track a killer, as McBain.

It was a literary exercise that showed readers that while he is both Hunter and McBain, each tells stories in dramatically different ways.

He readily acknowledged, however, that he was better known by his pen name than as Evan Hunter.

“I can call a restaurant and make a reservation as Ed McBain, and when I get there the chef will be coming out of the kitchen with books for me to sign,� he told the New York Times in 1997. “If I call as Evan Hunter, I get a table near the phone booths.�

Hunter received a Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement from the Mystery Writers of America in 1986, and in 1998 he became the only American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Assn.’s highest award. In 1985, Newsweek magazine named his 1983 book “Ice� one of the 10 best mystery novels of the 20th century.

The son of a postal worker and his wife, Hunter was born Salvatore A. Lombino on Oct. 15, 1926, in East Harlem. The family later moved to the Bronx.

Hunter studied art on a scholarship at the Art Students League of New York and at Cooper Union Art School.

But while serving in the Navy from 1944 to 1946, he began writing mystery and science-fiction stories to ward off boredom during his off-duty hours as a radar man aboard a destroyer in the Pacific.

He sent his stories to pulp magazines, which routinely rejected them. His shipmates even ran pools on when his next rejection slip would arrive. But, he later said, “I never got discouraged.�

After his Navy service, he majored in English at New York’s Hunter College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. While writing nights and weekends -- and continuing to amass rejection slips -- he worked as a substitute teacher, a telephone lobster salesman and a literary agent.

He eventually began selling his crime, adventure, western and fantasy stories to magazines under a variety of pseudonyms. He was so prolific that he sometimes had four or five stories published in the same magazine under an equal number of pen names.

In 1952, after selling his first novel, “Find the Feathered Serpent� -- a story for children about a time traveler -- under the name Evan Hunter, he had his name legally changed.

“All the kids I grew up with had names like Mario and Rocco, and Evan sounded like a real exotic name,� he told the New York Times in 2000. “And Hunter sounded like a guy who wanted to achieve and become somebody in this city.�

Besides, he said in another interview, he had discovered that in publishing there was “an ethnic bias against Italian-named writers.�

With $3,000 in the bank in 1953, Hunter quit his job at a literary agency to write full time. He was down to his last $300 when he sold “The Blackboard Jungle.�

“Nothing in my life has been as wonderful,� he later told People magazine.

He followed “The Blackboard Jungle� with other bestsellers, including “Second Ending� (1956), “Strangers When We Meet� (1958), “Mothers and Daughters� (1961) and “Last Summer� (1968).

After one of Hunter’s stories was used on Alfred Hitchcock’s television show, he was asked if he would like to write the screenplay for “The Birds.�

Hunter, who also wrote the first draft of Hitchcock’s “Marnie,� chronicled his working relationship with the legendary director in his 1997 memoir “Me and Hitch.�

He also wrote screen adaptations of a number of his own novels, including “Strangers When We Meet,� a 1960 drama starring Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak, and “Fuzz,� a 1972 comedy-drama starring Burt Reynolds.

Hunter, whose first two marriages ended in divorce, is survived by his wife, Dragica; three sons, Ted, Mark and Richard; a stepdaughter, Amanda Finley; and two grandchildren.