Leo Frank (writer)

Leo Frank (born June 29, 1925 in Vienna , † March 19, 2004 in Bad Ischl ; born / actually Leo Maier ) was an Austrian criminal author .

Life

Leo Frank began his professional career under his maiden name Leo Maier as a trial bowel in Braunau (Upper Austria). In 1948 he switched to the state police in Linz . In 1961 he was sent to Jerusalem for a few months to observe the Eichmann trial as the official reporter . Back in Linz he worked as a detective again. In this role he was involved in an information scandal about the Voest Group in 1967 . He was suspected of having supplied confidential material to foreign intelligence services , and he was featured in the media under the name "James Bond of Linz". This was followed by a punitive transfer to Vienna, where after a few months he accepted an offer to be transferred to Cyprus .

Between 1967 and 1974 Leo Maier was the head of the criminal investigation department of the Austrian UN troops in Nicosia . In Cyprus he began to write his first crime novels - Leo Frank was born. But it took a few years before his first novel The Talking Doll was published in 1976 .

In 1974 he returned to Linz - meanwhile fully rehabilitated in the Voest affair. He headed various departments (violence department, moral department, murder department) before he was named the city's top criminalist in 1980.

At the age of 59 he retired and moved to his adopted home Bad Ischl, where he died in 2004. Leo Frank-Maier (as he also called himself) was married and had two children.

author

Frank's diverse professional experience and knowledge flow into his crime novels , which are characterized by a wealth of detail and dry humor. His experience abroad also finds its literary expression, for example in his 1977 Cyprus crime thriller Die Zikaden . His stay in Israel is reflected in his novel The Programmed Agent , published in 1979 , in which a journalist is sent to the Eichmann trial and questions his conscience.

Despite his literary success, Leo Frank did not see himself as a man of letters and did not join any authors' association. In 1993 his autobiography Confession was published. The Life of a Policeman , a year later, in 1994, his last novel Gold and Tribadie was published. He has not published any new books in the last ten years of his life.

Leo Frank wrote a total of 15 books, some of which became bestsellers. Seven novels were filmed as Tatort and Eurocops , the best known include Nachtstreife (ORF, first broadcast in 1985) and Das Archiv (ORF, first broadcast in 1986).

Works

• The talking doll . Herbig, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7766-0781-5
• Cicadas don't sing . Herbig, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7766-0849-8
• The archive . Herbig, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7766-0898-6
• The programmed agent . Herbig, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-7766-1000-X
• The 13 hours of the Christian Maginot. Novel of a hostage situation . Herbig, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7766-1099-9
• Inspector Pernell's experience . (Crime stories). Vienna, Amalthea 1981, ISBN 3-85002-149-1
• Night patrol. Novel about crooks, whores and detectives . Welsermühl, Wels 1983, ISBN 3-85339-183-4
• Operation Johannesburg . Herbig, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7766-1394-7
• A case for the Last Judgment . Herbig, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7766-1451-X
• The beast from Bisamberg . Herbig, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7766-1530-3
• Escape to Death and other crime stories from the Vienna crime scene . Verl. Of the Österr. State Dr. Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7046-0107-1
• Cannons for Tripoli . Herbig, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7766-1590-7
• Is everything fine, Officer? 40 cheerful guessing stories . Verl. Of the Österr. Staatsdr., Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-7046-0135-7
• Confession. The life of a cop. From agent hunter to chief investigator Colonel Leo Maier . Grosser, Linz, 1993, ISBN 3-85267-006-3
• Gold and Tribadie. A novel about methods of the Mafia and the police and about human weaknesses . Grosser, Linz 1994, ISBN 3-85267-008-X

Web links

• Literature by and about Leo Frank in the catalog of the German National Library
• Screenplay Forum Vienna Filmed scripts