Gerald Butler (writer)

Gerald Butler
Butler pictured in the dust jacket of his 1951 novel Choice of Two Women
Born	Gerald Alfred Butler (1907-07-31)31 July 1907 Crewe, Cheshire, England[1]
Died	1 February 1988(1988-02-01) (aged 80) Eastbourne, East Sussex, England
Occupation	Novelist, screenwriter, chemist
Period	1940–1972
Genre	Crime, thriller, pulp

Gerald Alfred Butler (31 July 1907 – 1 February 1988) was an English crime, thriller, and pulp writer and screenwriter. He was sometimes referred to as the "English James M. Cain",^[2][3] and his characters were noted as amoral and hardboiled.^[4][5][6] His novels include the best-seller Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1940), as well as They Cracked Her Glass Slipper (1941), Their Rainbow Had Black Edges (1943), Mad with Much Heart (1945), Slippery Hitch (1948), Choice of Two Women (1951), and his late career come-back There Is a Death, Elizabeth (1972). His stories have been translated and published in multiple languages, including French, Swedish, German, and Finnish.

Four of his novels were optioned by film production companies, including Warner Brothers Pictures (Slippery Hitch, unmade), Eagle-Lion Films (Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, unmade), Charles K. Feldman Group Productions (Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, unmade), Norma Productions / Harold Hecht Productions / Universal-International Pictures (Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, 1948), Anglofilm / General Film Distributors (They Cracked Her Glass Slipper, made as Third Time Lucky, 1949), and RKO Radio Pictures (Mad with Much Heart, made as On Dangerous Ground, 1951). In addition to adapting his own novel for the screenplay of Third Time Lucky, Butler also wrote the screenplay for the Anglofilm / Columbia Pictures movie The Fatal Night (1948), adapted from Michael Arlen's short story, "The Gentleman from America." American radio program Lux Radio Theatre also broadcast an adaptation of Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, under the title The Unafraid, on Columbia Broadcast System in 1949.