It’s the birthday of hardboiled crime writer Charles Williams (1909-1975), not to be confused with the British writer of the same name who was a member of the Oxford literary discussion group, The Inklings. Who, by the way—since we’re talking about him anyway—is far, far easier to find biographical information on than the Charles Williams of this post, whose birthday it actually is.

Williams was born in San Angelo, Texas, which is central Texas. (Okay, now I have that song in my head that begins, “Out in the West Texas town of El Paso / I fell in love with a Mexican girl…” which has nothing at all to do with Williams. I’m just going to say it: I’m finding *nothing* on this guy’s life outside of a publisher’s web page or two and Wikipedia, which I never rely on, which seems odd because Williams was considered one of the great suspense novelists of his day, sold a ton of books, and had a bunch of his books made into movies. One of which starred Nicole Kidman. Come on! Nicole Kidman. So this paragraph is basically just filler.)

Williams served in the U.S. Merchant Marine for about 10 years as a radio operator. (I desperately want to make that plural: Merchant Marines. Doesn’t that sound better? Yet it would be incorrect to do so. More filler. You caught me.) He later worked for the Puget Sound Navy Yard, probably as an electronics inspector, but you know: Wikipedia. So who knows? Anyway. What we do know is that he published his first novel, Hill Girl, in 1951, and it sold over a million copies and he was a full-time author for the rest of his life. He wrote noir fiction for Gold Medal Books and evidently was the first paperwork original author to get reviewed by Anthony Boucher of the New York Times, which was a great honor, but I CAN’T FIND THAT REVIEW. We do know there was an Anthony Boucher. We do know Boucher did reviews for the New York Times and had a column called “Criminals at Large.” We even know that Boucher’s review style was “jaunty, even chatty, and devoid of malice,” which is interesting in a reviewer. Frankly it would be easy to write a post about Boucher.

Williams also wrote some “blue-water noir,” or thrillers set at sea; two of the best are said to be Scorpion Reef (1955) and Aground (1960). Williams wrote over 20 novels in all and about 13 were made into movies, though not all in English: Williams was very popular in France and most of his work is still in print there. (Go fig.) About 13 of his novels have been re-released in the U.S. in the past few years. The Nicole Kidman movie was Dead Calm (1989, also starring Sam Neill), and in 1990, Williams’ book Hell Hath No Fury (1953) was made into the movie The Hot Spot, directed by Dennis Hopper.

We also know that Williams’ wife died of cancer in 1972 and Williams was very depressed about this and finally killed himself in 1975. Which is very sad. (Also, I still have that song in my head.)

Have a good Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.