LANHAM, EDWIN MOULTRIE, JR. (1904-1979), son of Edwin and Elizabeth (Stephens) Lanham, was born at Weatherford, Texas, on October 11, 1904. When he was sixteen he traveled around the world on a freighter, a trip that provided the source for his first novel, Sailors Don't Care (1929). After he returned he lived a year in New Hampshire and then attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. At the end of his junior year he left school and went to Paris to study painting for four years. He also lived in the south of France. During this time he worked in Paris with Robert McAlmon, who published the early works of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, H. D., Robert Coates, and others. McAlmon published Lanham's Sailors in 1929 under his Contact Editions imprint.

Lanham moved to New York at the start of the Great Depression and worked for the New York Post, the City News Service, and the New York Herald Tribune. During this time he published several novels.

Later Lanham switched to mysteries, of which he wrote thirteen.

He died at his home in Connecticut on July 24, 1979.

Detective Bibliography

Slug it Slay aka Headlined for Murder (1946)

Politics Is Murder (1947)

One Murder Too Many (1952)

Death of a Corinthian (1953)

There Was Death in the Wind (1955)

Murder on My Street (1957)

Double Jeopardy (1959)

No Hiding Place (1962)

Monkey on a Chain (1963)

Six Black Camels (1961) 

Speak not evil (1964)

Passage to Danger (1961)