Lawrence Arthur Goldstone (1903–1998), better known by his pen name, Lawrence Treat, was an American mystery writer, a pioneer of the genre of novels that became known as

police procedurals The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on eithe ...

. Treat began his professional life as a lawyer, having attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

and

Columbia University School of Law Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

. When his law firm broke up in 1928, shortly after he had begun to work there, he traveled to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. A friend living in

Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...

provided him with free room and board, and Goldstone decided to settle down and teach himself to write. His knowledge of law led him to try his hand at crime writing. He sold his very first novel and returned to the United States to write full-time. In a career that would span over seventy years, Treat wrote several hundred short stories for mystery magazines and other publications. He was a founding member of 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 ...

and a two-time winner of the MWA's Edgar Award. His first award came in 1965, for the short story "H as in Homicide"; his second was a Special Edgar Award in 1978 for editing a new edition of the ''Mystery Writer's Handbook'', the MWA's guide for aspiring mystery writers, first published in 1956. As a member of the

League of American Writers The League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1935. The group included Communist Party members, and so-called " fell ...

, he served on its ''Keep America Out of War Committee'' in January 1940 during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He died on January 7, 1998, in his hometown of Martha's Vineyard,

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at the age of 94.

Selected works

*''Run Far, Run Fast'' (1937) *''B as in Banshee'' (1940) *''D as in Dead'' (1941) *''H as in Hangman'' (1942) *''O as in Omen'' (1943) *''Wail for the Corpses'' (1943) *''Leather Man'' (1944) *''V as in Victim'' (1945) *''H as in Hunted'' (1946) *''Q as in Quicksand'' (1947) *''T as in Trapped'' (1947) *''F as in Flight'' (1948) *''Over the Edge'' (1948) *''Trial and Terror'' (1949) *''Big Shot'' (1951) *''Lady, Drop Dead'' (1960) *''Venus Unarmed'' (1961) *''P as in Police'' (edited by

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

) (1970) *''Crime and Puzzlement'' (1981) *''Crime and Puzzlement 2'' (1982) *''The Clue Armchair Detective'' (1983) *''Crime and Puzzlement 3'' (1988) *''Crime and Puzzlement 4: My Cousin Phoebe'' (1991) *''Crime and Puzzlement 5: On Martha's Vineyard, Mostly'' (1993)

References

1903 births 1998 deaths American male novelists American mystery writers Edgar Award winners 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Dartmouth College alumni Columbia University alumni {{US-novelist-1900s-stub