Best of 2000: Best Local Writer

Robert Wade

Robert Wade is a lifelong San Diegan. He writes the "Spadework" column in the Union-Tribune book-review section once a month or so, the local mystery reader's guide to whatever is any damned good to read or not among the onslaught of suspense fiction published every month. Wade has authored or coauthored (with the late William Miller) some 46 novels over the past 50 years. All but 4 of his books are out of print. In 1993 Harper Perennial had the wisdom to reissue Shoot to Kill, Uneasy Street, Calamity Fair, and Murder Charge, all under the pseudonym Wade Miller. In October 1998, his novel, Fatal Step was serialized in these pages and his first, the 1946 novel Deadly Weapon, was published here in late 1999. Under the name Whit Masterson, Wade and Miller wrote Touch of Evil, which became the classic noir film with Orson Welles and Charlton Heston. Seek out and find The Death of Me Yet, Guilty Bystander, or anything you can by this writer, among the first American novelists to elevate the genre crime fiction to art.