:Mitchell Smith
{{Short description|American writer}}
{{infobox writer
|name=Mitchell Smith
|birth_date={{birth year and age|1935}}
|birth_place=New York, U.S.
|occupation=Author
|alma_mater=Columbia University
|genres={{flatlist|
}}
}}
Mitchell Smith (born 1935) is an American author writing crime fiction and science fiction.{{cite news|url=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2001931413_smith18.html|title='Snowfall' sci-fi trilogy captures a fearsomely frozen future|last=Gwinn|first=Mary Ann|date=2004-05-18|work=The Seattle Times|accessdate=2008-07-16}}
Biography
Mitchell Smith was born in upper New York State, and went to military school on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. He attended Columbia University, where he studied English and history. He enlisted in the army working in military intelligence stationed in Berlin during the Cold War. After leaving the army, he started his career in writing. He currently lives in Whatcom County, Washington.
Writing
Smith started his writing career with pulp Westerns, including several "erotic Westerns" (in the Buckskin imprint) published under the pen-name of Roy LeBeau, and then switching to crime novels. His novels include Daydreams (1987), which centers on a female detective investigating the murder of a call girl; Stone City (1990), a mystery set entirely in a maximum security prison, where an imprisoned professor is appointed by the inmates to solve a series of murders (remarkably similar to the HBO series Oz (1997) in its initial premise); Due North (1992), concerning a woman who returns to Seattle from the Alaskan wilderness to care for her dying mother; Karma (1994), a thriller featuring Hindu mobsters; Sacrifice (1997), a thriller in the vein of Floridian crime writers (Charles Willeford, John D. MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen); and Reprisal (1999), a tale of familial revenge and psychological horror which is celebrated in an essay by Michael Shea in Horror: Another 100 Best Books.Shea, Michael: "On Reprisal" in Horror: Another Hundred Best Books, pp 394-396, edited by Stephen Jones & Kim Newman, Carroll & Graf paperback, 1998 Smith switched to science fiction with his latest books which form The Snowfall Trilogy consisting of Snowfall, Kingdom River, and Moonrise.
Smith's story "Popcorn" was adapted as a film of the same name.{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-01-ca-185-story.html |title=MOVIE REVIEW : 'Popcorn': A Nifty Tribute to Its Genre |last=Thomas |first=Kevin |date=1 February 1991 |work=Los Angeles Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305215320/http://articles.latimes.com/1991-02-01/entertainment/ca-185_1_movie-festival |archive-date=5 March 2016 |url-status=live }}
References
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Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American crime fiction writers
Category:American male novelists
Category:American science fiction writers
Category:Novelists from New York (state)
Category:20th-century American male writers
Category:21st-century American male writers
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