John Franklin Bardin
John Franklin Bardin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 30, 1916. During his teens, he lost nearly all his immediate family to various ailments. As he approached thirty, he moved to New York City where during his adulthood he was an executive of an advertising agency, published ten novels and taught creative writing as well as advertising at the NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH.
In 1946, Bardin entered a period of intense creativity during which he wrote three crime novels that were relatively unsuccessful at first, one of them not even being published in America until the late 1960s, but which have since become well-regarded cult novels. His best-regarded works, The Deadly Percheron, The Last of Philip Banter and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly experienced renewed interest in the 1970s when they were discovered by British readers.
Also involved in public relations and journalism, Mr. Bardin resided thereafter in New York City until his death.
“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book takes the reader into a new world of experience; it is an experiment. A bad book, unless the writing is inept, reinforces the intransigent attitude of the reader not to experiment with a new world. Since there are criminals and psychopaths and sociopaths in all my novels they are in a way psychological thrillers.”
“Not today! No, never again would she sit by the window, her back turned so she would not see him walk down the flagstone path with Dr Danzer, the limp volume of her favourite Bach spread open to the first page of the text, the black notes swarming before her eyes, her fingers arching in elaborate dumb-show as they practised the first trill, her mind on the beats, the leaning upon the upper note, the precise apperception of the stopping point - not a moment to soon, not a moment too late - and in her ears once more the sound, the slow dignity, of Anna Magdalena's sarabande, a delicate ornament for her melancholy.”