Born George Hopley-Woolrich, Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) is the pen name most often employed by one of America's best crime and noir writers, whose other pseudonyms included George Hopley and William Irish, the moniker under which Waltz into Darkness was first published. His novels were among the first to employ the atmosphere, outlook, and impending sense of doom that came to be characterized as noir, and inspired some of the most famous films of the period, including Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window , Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black , The Phantom Lady , and celebrated B-movies such as The Leopard Man and Black Angel . Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of eight novels, including Some Die Nameless , published in 2018, and four titles featuring professional thief Crissa Stone. A native of Long Branch, N.J., he's a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore. Otto Penzler , the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City's Mysterious Bookshop (1979).

He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection , 1977, and The Lineup , 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine . He has edited more than 80 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.