DEADLIER THAN THE MALE Helen is in Reno for her second divorce and staying with Mrs. Krantz and her daughter Rachel at their boarding house. Mrs. Krantz’s drinking companion, Laura Pollicker, lives next door. That night she is murdered, and Helen discovers the body—and wastes no time in returning to the San Francisco house she shares with his sister Georgia. How could she know that the very man who meets and marries her sister only days later is the same man who had slit Mrs. Pollicker’s throat. Sam Wild is a powerful man, tall, muscular, with very little control over his emotions. His friend Mart watches out for him, but Sam sometimes just can’t help himself—he has to kill. Now he’s got a rich wife with an attractive sister, and he’s just biding his time until he can take over Georgia’s money and get rid of her, too. But that’s when Helen steps in with some plans of her own. “Deadlier Than the Male is truly one of the strangest of all American crime novels. In fact it’s one of the strangest of all American novels… It is in no way a pleasant read but it is fascinating in a bizarre, morbid and very unsettling way. Gunn’s style is as extreme and as offbeat as his plotting. This is psychological noir at its darkest.”—Vintage Pop Fictions James Edward Gunn was born August 22, 1920 in San Francisco. He was only twenty-one and a senior at Stanford University when he wrote his sole novel, Deadlier Than the Male, as part of a class assignment. He became a screenwriter soon after, beginning with the script for Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck. Soon after, Gunn saw Deadlier adapted into the film Born to Kill with Lawrence Tierney. He continued to script a variety of films, including The Unfaithful, which he co-wrote with David Goodis, before turning to TV where he wrote for such programs as Checkmate, Wagon Train and 77 Sunset Strip. One of his last projects was a TV script adapted from the Martin Ritt film, The Long, Hot Summer. Gunn died in Los Angeles, California, on September 20, 1966 at the young age of 46.