Novelist Evan Hunter wrote both crime and science fiction using the names Evan Hunter, Hunt Collins, Curt Cannon, Richard Marsten, D.A. Addams and Ted Taine. Born Salvatore Albert Lombino in 1926, the author legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952, but saw the most success from the work he published under the pseudonym Ed McBain. Beginning in 1956, he used that name for the majority of the crime fiction he wrote as part of the long-running “87th Precinct” series.
In a 2005 obituary for Hunter, who died of cancer at age 78, The New York Times explained that Hunter initially moved away from his (very Italian) birth name due to prejudice against writers with foreign names. “If you’re an Italian-American, you’re not supposed to be a literate person,” he said in 1981. It added that the Ed McBain and Evan Hunter bylines were kept very separate “to avoid any confusion or shock that readers of Evan Hunter’s “serious” books might feel when exposed to the “mayhem, bloodshed and violence” that were Ed McBain’s meat and drink.”