Robert Ellis (author)

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Robert Ellis
Ellis, New York City (2015)
Ellis, New York City (2015)
BornRobert Patterson Ellis
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
NationalityAmerican
GenreCrime fiction
Website
robertellis.net

Robert Ellis is an

Los Angeles, California
, where he lived most of his adult life before returning to the East Coast.

Early life and career

Ellis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as Robert Patterson Ellis, and encouraged by his parents to embrace the arts. In his teens, Ellis played rhythm guitar in numerous garage bands, and managed the kitchen at The Main Point, a nightclub in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where he had the opportunity to meet and hang out with blues and jazz greats like Muddy Waters, Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, and Larry Coryell, among others.[1]

Still haunted by the murder of Connie Evans, a fifteen-year-old girl found in a shallow grave near his home as a boy, Ellis's interest in crime fiction began to evolve with the films of

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, and Dashiell Hammett. Soon he gave up music to write and study filmmaking, and began skipping classes at Conestoga High School to attend murder trials. These experiences became short stories, with Ellis sharing the position of co-editor of the school newspaper. Ellis attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, majoring in film and philosophy, and graduating summa cum laude. After surviving a catastrophic car crash by a tractor-trailer, he turned to screenwriting and studied with Walter Tevis, author of The Hustler, The Color of Money, and The Man Who Fell to Earth.[2]

Ellis made an early career in film, television, and advertising. His first film, The Great Lake States, written and co-produced for

Democratic Caucus.[3][4]

Becoming an author

By his own account, everything changed for Ellis when he was assigned the task of gathering surveillance footage of a mobster running for political office in a New Jersey ghetto. While Ellis and a collaborator hid on the third floor of a parking garage with a long-lens motion picture camera, the subject walked outside, stepped away from the building, looked straight up at the lens and froze. Says Ellis, "He thought the camera was a rifle. For a split second, he thought he was dead. And in a single instant, I realized that the horrific world Dashiell Hammett described so perfectly was alive and well and always would be." Ellis began working on Access to Power, the screenplay that would later become his first novel, the following day.[5]

Robert Ellis is the international bestselling author of Access to Power and The Dead Room, as well as two critically acclaimed series – the Lena Gamble novels and the Detective Matt Jones series. His novels have been translated into more than ten languages and selected as top reads by

Baltimore Sun, People magazine, USA Today, and The New York Times. Ellis's novels have garnered praise from authors as diverse as Janet Evanovich and Michael Connelly
.

Novels

Novels by Robert Ellis
Published Title Series
2001 Access to Power
2002 The Dead Room
2007 City of Fire Lena Gamble
2009 The Lost Witness Lena Gamble
2011 Murder Season Lena Gamble
2015 City of Echoes Matt Jones
2016 The Love Killings Matt Jones
2019 The Girl Buried in the Woods Matt Jones
2021 City of Stones Matt Jones

References

  1. ^ Mystery Readers Journal, "L.A. in a Heartbeat", Summer 2009
  2. ^ Mystery Readers Journal, "L.A. in a Heartbeat", Summer 2009
  3. ^ WNPR Interview with Robert Ellis, "The Faith Middleton Show", March 10, 2009
  4. ^ Publishers Weekly, "Film vs. Fiction", April 27, 2007
  5. ^ WNPR Interview with Robert Ellis, "The Faith Middleton Show", March 10, 2009

External links

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