Basil Copper

Basil Copper (1924-2013) became a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field, "The Spider", was published in 1964 in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories, since when his short fiction has appeared in numerous collections and anthologies, and been extensively adapted for radio and television. Along with two non-fiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, his other books include the novels The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, The Black Death and The House of the Wolf.

Copper has also written more than fifty hardboiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August Derleth's Sherlock Holmes-like consulting detective Solar Pons in several volumes of short stories and the novel Solar Pons versus The Devil's Claw.