Began writing at a young age, he wrote novels like A Thrill a Minute With Jack Albany, Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Kill Today, The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome, The Gun and Mr Smith, The Blue Hour, The Man in Question, This Year's Death, The Clay Assassin, and The Fifth House. His novel The Taking of Pelham 123 was a best seller in 1973 and made into a hit movie with
Walter Matthau and
Robert Shaw in 1974 and remade in 2009.