About Eugene Izzi

Eugene Izzi (March 23, 1953 – December 7, 1996) was an American crime writer.

Izzi, a lifelong resident of Chicago, set most of his work in that city. He wrote in the classic hard-boiled style made famous by Mickey Spillane and Dashiell Hammett. Despite moderate popularity, he is best known for the unusual circumstances surrounding his death.

Although few details are known of Izzi's early life, most accounts describe a trouble-prone youth. Izzi himself dropped out of high school and enlisted in the army. During his military service, Izzi completed his high school equivalency degree. Upon his return to Chicago, Izzi began an ordinary blue-collar life, working at the steel mills on Chicago's south side. Although married with children, Izzi began to drink heavily and acquired his own criminal record. In 1991, Izzi appeared at Barbara's Book Store in Oak Park, Illinois promoting his book "Prowlers". At this book signing, he talked about how he came to writing. After he and his wife had separated due to his depression and hard drinking, he began a swift decline, but he always carried with him his portable typewriter. He reached bottom when he was sleeping in the back room of a barber shop in exchange for cleaning up and helping around the shop. One night he reread what he had been writing over the past months and realized his stories were all self-pitying parodies of his own recent life: a misunderstood man wrongfully rebuffed by the woman he loved. He knew that if he wanted to be a writer, he had to break away from self-pity. He began writing stories about the people of steel mill neighborhoods on the Southeast side of Chicago where he grew up and toiled. He had found his path as a writer. He began to pull his life together and reconciled with his wife.