Campbell Armstrong

Campbell Armstrong (born February 25, 1944 in Glasgow , Scotland , † March 1, 2013 in Dublin , Ireland ) was a British screenwriter , university lecturer and author of around 30 thrillers , detective novels and plays . Campbell Armstrong also wrote very successfully under the pseudonym Campbell Black in the 1970s and 1980s .

Life

Armstrong, born in Glasgow in 1944, left his native Scotland for London in 1962 to pursue his dream of a career as a writer.

He studied at the University of Sussex , where he graduated in philosophy . From 1971 to 1974 he taught creative writing at the State University of New York . From 1975 to 1978 he taught at Arizona State University , but in 1979 he decided to end his university career and devote himself entirely to literature. He then returned to England and initially worked as a journalist and editor in various London publishers, before he switched entirely to writing books.

After many years in England and the United States, he lived with his family in Shannon Harbor, Ireland.

Campbell Armstrong died on March 1, 2013 in his adopted home Ireland, just four days after his 69th birthday, of complications from cancer.

plant

His first novel under the pseudonym Campbell Black Assassins & Victims was published by MacMillan in London in 1969. In the following years other works such as The Punctual Rape and Death's Head were created .

In 1972 Armstrong won the prestigious Scottish Arts Council Award in his native Scotland in the same year, for Assassins & Victims and for The Punctual Rape for his first novels.

By the late 1970s he wrote four other books: Asterisk (1976), Brainfire (1977), The Wanting (1978), and Mr. Apology (1979).

In 1980 the novel Letters from the Dead was published . The Scot was considered a respected crime writer on the island. But the great success, the hoped-for international breakthrough as a bestselling author, did not materialize until then. So Armstrong changed its strategy.

At the beginning of the 1980s he switched to writing film books. Two very successful books on well-known films were also published under the pseudonym Campbell Black. In 1980, together with the American director Brian De Palma, he wrote the film novel for his thriller Dressed to Kill , starring Michael Caine . In 1981 he wrote the book to film the world famous production of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Raiders of the Lost Ark (Raiders of the Lost Ark) with Harrison Ford in the title role of the archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones .

After less fertile literary years as an editor in various English publishing houses, he wrote the screenplay for the film Apology - Deadly Confession with Lesley Ann Warren and Peter Weller in 1986 as a screenwriter together with Mark Medoff, based on his novel Mr. Apology from 1979, but without on Ending to be featured in the credits of the film.

The Scottish writer then dropped his pseudonym Campbell Black and has only published under his maiden name Campbell Armstrong since 1987.

From the end of the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, international bestsellers such as Jig (1987), The Last Mazurka ( Mazurka , 1988), Mambo (1990), EX ( Agents of Darkness , 1991), Concert of Ghosts appeared , 1992), The Prisoners ( Jigsaw , 1994), Heat (1996), Blackout (1996), And No Step Ahead ( Silencer , 1997), or Deadline (2000)

Between 2002 and 2006 he dedicated the Quartet of Glasgow Novels to his hometown, consisting of the works The Bad Fire (2002), The Last Darkness (2002), White Rage (2004), and Butcher (2006).

For his books The Last Darkness (2003) and White Rage (2004) from the Glasgow cycle, he was nominated for the European Crime Prize, the Prix ​​du polar européen .

Armstrong is also the author of a treatise entitled All That Really Matters (2000), published in Germany in 2001 under the title I Hope Your Life Was Beautiful - A True Story .

His work was initially mainly by writer and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson influenced, and he writes a certain "dark aspect" in his works the first gloomy scenes from Stevenson's Treasure Island , Treasure Iceland to. He mentions Franz Kafka , Fred Vargas , Kobo Abe and Albert Camus as other major influences that shaped him as an author .

Armstrong's books, including many international bestsellers, have been translated into 11 different languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Greek, Polish, Japanese and Hebrew, among others. *

reception

• Review:

- “Campbell Armstrong kept the promise he made to Eileen. With the book “I hope your life was beautiful” he recorded the story of the search and meeting of mother and daughter. It has become a moving testimony, written in a captivating and very personal style. Because Armstrong is honest enough to contribute his part to Eileen's life. Not only is the book the account of the search and encounter between mother and daughter, it is also a confession by crime writer Campbell Armstrong. He accounts for himself openly and honestly, perhaps also engaging in a kind of exorcism with the hope that the devil of addiction will no longer have the opportunity to seize power over him. And last but not least, the report is also a final tribute to a remarkable and generous woman, Eileen Black. ”(By Eva Magin-Pelich), October 19, 2003

• Review:

- Village Voice for Campbell Black's novel “The wanting” - Quote: “Black writes much better than King or Straub”.

Awards

• 1972: Scottish Arts Council Award for Assassins & Victims

literature

Plays as Campbell Black

• 1968: Death's Head , ((BBC-TV)), Campbell Black
• 1970: And They Used to Star in Movies , (Peacock, Dublin; Travers, Edinburgh; Body Politic, Chicago; Soho Poly, London), Campbell Black

Novels as Campbell Black

• 1969: Assassins & Victims , (Roman), Campbell Black, MacMillan London, 1969, 174 pages, ISBN
• 1970: The Punctual Rape , (Roman), Campbell Black, MacMillan London, 1970, 188 pages, ISBN 0-333-11204-0
• 1971: Death's Head , (novel), Campbell Black, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1972, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-00-221182-6
• 1976: Asterisk , (Roman), Campbell Black, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1992, 384 pages, ISBN 0-586-21513-1
• 1977: Brainfire , (Roman), Campbell Black, Grafton Books, London, 1991, 416 pages, ISBN 0-586-21511-5
• 1978: The Wanting , (Roman), Campbell Black, McGraw-Hill New York, 1986, 278 pages, ISBN 978-0-07-005564-3
• 1979: Mr. Apology , (novel), Campbell Black, Ballantine Books, New York, 1984,? Pages, ISBN 0-345-29411-4
• 1980: Letters from the Dead , (Roman), Campbell Black, Grafton Books, London, 1987, 320 pages, ISBN 0-586-07033-8
• 1980: Dressed to Kill , (Roman), Brian De Palma and Campbell Black, Arrow Books, 1980, 240 pages, ISBN 0-09-923940-X
• 1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark , (novel), Campbell Black, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich, 1981, 192 pages, ISBN 3-442-06381-7

Novels as Campbell Armstrong

• 1987: Jig Jig , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1993, 654 pages, ISBN 978-3-404-25221-3
• 1988: Die last Mazurka Mazurka , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1994, 508 pages, ISBN 3-404-13499-0
• 1990: Mambo Mambo , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1997 608 pages, ISBN 3-404-13843-0
• 1991: EX Agents of Darkness , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1993, 480 pages, ISBN 3-404-13461-3
• 1992: Konzert der Schatten Concert of Ghosts , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1994, 290 pages, ISBN 3-404-13553-9
• 1994: Die Gefangene Jigsaw , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1995, 480 pages, ISBN 3-404-13653-5
• 1996: Heat , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Doubleday, 1996, 446 pages, ISBN 0-385-40478-6
• 1996: Blackout , (Roman), Campbell Armstrong, Book Club Associates, 1998, 424 pages, ISBN 978-0-552-14497-1
• 1997: And no step further Silencer , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Scherz Verlag, Bern, 2003, 448 pages, ISBN 3-502-51898-X
• 2000: Deadline , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Doubleday, 2000, 420 pages, ISBN 0-385-41070-0

Glasgow Novels as Campbell Armstrong

• 2002: The Bad Fire , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2002, 440 pages, ISBN 0-00-651497-9
• 2003: The Last Darkness , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2002, 368 pages, ISBN 978-0-00-226202-6
• 2004: White Rage , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2004, 480 pages, ISBN 978-0-00-714963-6
• 2006: Butcher , (novel), Campbell Armstrong, Allison & Busby, 2006, 340 pages, ISBN 978-0-7490-8141-6

Play as Campbell Armstrong

• 2008: The Trial of Mr. Punch on Charges of Cruelty , (play), by Campbell Armstrong

Radio play as Campbell Armstrong

• 2008: Whispering , (radio play broadcast on the BBC 2008), by Campbell Armstrong

Treatise as Campbell Armstrong

• 2000: All That Really Matters , (essay), Campbell Armstrong, Bastei-Verlag, Gustav H. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 2001, 320 pages, ISBN 3-404-14909-2

Web links

• Web site from author Campbell Armstrong
• Literature by and about Campbell Armstrong in the catalog of the German National Library
• Campbell Armstrong in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• " The unknown classic " by Martin Compart (German)
• Campbell Armstrong in crime authors A – Z (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary
2. ↑ Short biography of Campbell Armstrong in: New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From HarperCollins April-June 10
3. ↑ Scottish Arts Council Award Homepage ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Scottish Arts Council Award 1972 in Letters from the Dead , by Campbell Black, Pocket Books 1986, p. 277
5. ↑ Dressed to Kill by Brian De Palma and Campbell Black, in Dressed to kill: a novel, Brian De Palma, Campbell Black, Bantam Books, 1980, 186 pages
6. ↑ Apology - Deadly Confession by Campbell Black in the IMDb
7. ↑ International retrospective with translations in other languages ​​of works by Campbell Armstrong at WorldCat Identities  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ "I Hope Your Life Was Beautiful - A True Story", (by Campbell Armstrong), Rütten and Loening, 2001, 278 pages
9. ↑ Village Voice Review of Campbell Black's "The Wanting," Campbell Black, McGraw-Hill, 1986, 264 pages
10. ↑ Scottish Arts Council Award ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.