Hillary Baldwin Waugh (June 22, 1920 – December 8, 2008) was a pioneering American mystery novelist. In 1989, Waugh was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
I was tired of reading about these super-detectives and a police force composed of a bunch of bumbling idiots. I wanted to get away from the neat little corpses with the perfect bullet through the head, and instead write a story as it really happened. (from a 1990 interview with the New York Times)
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Was awarded the Mystery Writers of America's "Grand Master" award in 1989, given for lifetime achievement, consistent quality, and contributions to the mystery genre.
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His 1952 book, "Last Seen Wearing," is regarded as a classic in the police procedural genre. It is considered to be one of the 100 best mystery novels ever written by many, including the London Sunday Times (1957), the Mystery Writers of America (1995), and the Crime Writers' Association (1990), who ranked it 12th, midway between Dashiell Hammett's "The Long Goodbye" (#10) and Raymond Chandler's "The Maltese Falcon" (#15).
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He used his native Connecticut as a setting for many of his novels, changing the names of real towns slightly.
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His hobbies included boxing, badminton, song writing, and drawing newspaper cartoons.
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He was an aviator in the US Navy during World War II.
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He graduated from Yale in 1942.
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Spent most of his life in Connecticut, except for some time in New York and Europe.
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One of the pioneers of the "police procedural" subgenre of detective fiction and creator of the characters Sheridan Wesley, Fred Fellows (chief of police), David Halliday, Frank Sessions (homicide detective), and Simon Kaye (ex-cop private investigator).
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