Phillip Margolin (born 1944) is an American writer of legal thrillers.

Biography

Margolin was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1944. After receiving a B.A. in Government in 1965, from American University in Washington, D.C., he worked as a

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F ...

volunteer in Liberia until 1967. He graduated from the

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

School of Law in 1970, and has worked for 25 years as a criminal defense attorney, an occupation of choice inspired by the ''

Perry Mason Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and 4 short stories, all of which involve a c ...

'' books. He started to work in 1970 at the

Oregon Court of Appeals The Oregon Court of Appeals is the state intermediate Court of Appeals, appellate court in the US state of Oregon. Part of the Oregon Judicial Department, it has thirteen judges and is located in Salem, Oregon, Salem. Except for death penalty cas ...

. He published his first story, a short story titled "The Girl in the Yellow Bikini", in 1974, and became a full-time writer in 1996. He has written 12 books as of January 2007. He lists as his favourite writer Joseph Conrad, and among his favourite books ''

War and Peace ''War and Peace'' (russian: Война и мир, translit=Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: ; ) is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy that mixes fictional narrative with chapters on history and philosophy. It was first published ...

'' by

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

and ''Stone City'' by

Mitchell Smith Mitchell Smith (born 1935) is an American author writing crime fiction and science fiction. Biography Mitchell Smith was born in upper New York State, and went to military school on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. He attended Columbia University where ...

. Philip Margolin was married to Doreen Stamm in 1968. They had two children, Ami and Daniel. Doreen, also an attorney, died from cancer in January 2007. In 2018, he married Melanie Nelson.About Phillip Margolin
/ref> Phillip Margolin is also the president of Chess for Success, a non-profit organisation "dedicated to helping children develop skills necessary for success in school and life by learning chess".

Bibliography

He has also co-authored ''Vanishing Acts (Madison Kincaid Mystery)'' with his daughter Ami Margolin Rome.Amazon Page
/ref>

Awards and recognitions

* 1978: nominated for an Edgar Award for best original paperback by the

Mystery Writers of America Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is an organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City. The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday. It presents the Edgar Awa ...

for ''Heartstone'' * 1999: the short story ''The Jailhouse Lawyer'' is published in the 1999 edition of ''The Best American Mystery Stories''

Notes

External links

His homepageAuthor page at his publisher HarperCollins
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Margolin, Phillip 1944 births 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists American thriller writers Living people Oregon lawyers Writers from Portland, Oregon 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from Oregon