Hi, I’m Steve Wellmeier, creator of this site.
Crime-suspense fiction first gripped me as an adult when a friend loaned me John D. MacDonald’s One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966), the eighth book in his Travis McGee series. I quickly circled back to the beginning—and then to MacDonald’s early stand-alone novels, starting with The Brass Cupcake (1950). After reading nearly all of his eighty books, he’s still “the Master” of hard-boiled fiction to me.
But my love of crime-suspense and noir began long before I knew the terms. As a kid, I often spent Saturday afternoons in the basement watching low-budget B-movies flicker across an old black-and-white TV.
Among the writers I return to most are Charles Williams, Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, David Goodis, Walter Mosley, Patricia Highsmith, and even Mickey Spillane. They all stand on the shoulders of the four great originators of pulp-noir-hardboiled fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich.
I live in Providence, Rhode Island, with my wife and our dog, Ginger. Most of my career has been spent in the cruise industry—nearly all of it marketing small 100-passenger expedition ships to remote, out-of-the-way destinations inaccessible to large mass-market vessels. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, I earned a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Cincinnati, where I also taught first-year composition. I received my Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and studied in the MBA program at Saint Louis University.
I discovered Donald MacKenzie in 2013 while watching Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies. The 1958 film Nowhere to Go—based on his first novel—starred George Nader and Maggie Smith in her screen debut. I was instantly drawn in and have spent the last dozen years learning everything I can about MacKenzie, his background, and his writing. Obsessed? Perhaps. Happily so.
PHOTO CREDITS:
MacKenzie bookshelf: Author’s collection, courtesy of the author, 2025.
Steve Wellmeier: Courtesy of Anne Bergeron, 2025.