Background
Benjamin Appel grew up in Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. It was this experience that he drew upon when writing his novels.
He lived most of his life in Roosevelt, New Jersey, and died there in 1977.
Benjamin Appel grew up in Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. It was this experience that he drew upon when writing his novels.
He lived most of his life in Roosevelt, New Jersey, and died there in 1977.
Before he began earning a living from his writing, he was a bank clerk, farmer, lumberjack, factory-hand and a housing inspector for New York City.
He began writing short stories and was published in both literary and slick magazines. "Brain Guy" was his first novel, followed by fifteen others. In 1945 and 1946 he was sent as historian/journalist with the McNutt Mission to the Philippines. Returning to the States, he moved to Roosevelt, New Jersey, a New Deal resettlement town, where he lived with his wife and three daughters and wrote both fiction and nonfiction until he died in 1977.
Brain Guy, aka The Enforcer (1934)
Four Roads to Death, aka Gold and Flesh (1935)
Runaround (1937)
The Power-House (1939)
The Dark Stain (1943)
But Not Yet Slain (1947)
Plunder (1952)
Dock Walloper (1953)
Life and Death of a Tough Guy, aka Teen-Age Mobster (1955)
Hell's Kitchen, aka Alley Kids (1956)
He was married, and had three daughters.