William Leonard Marshall

William Marshall (or William Leonard Marshall) (born 1944, Australia) is an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series.^[1]

In the Yellowthread Street series, the detectives of the Yellowthread Street police station in fictitious Hong Bay, Hong Kong – DCI Harry Feiffer, a European born and raised in Hong Kong; Senior Inspector Christopher O'Yee, half-Chinese, half-Caucasian American, and all neurotic; and the ever-bickering team of Inspectors Auden and Spencer – attempt to find the rational basis for inexplicable and seemingly bizarre crimes.^[2] The Yellowthread novels show the influence of Ed McBain in their overlapping plotlines, snappy dialogue, world-weary detectives and often-difficult civilians.^[3]

Marshall's novels manage to juggle violence, suspense, and slapstick humor in his twist on the police procedural form. He has also written two mystery series based in Manila and late-19th-century New York City, the latter featuring City Detective Virgil Tillman – New York City's "first thinking detective" – and his partner, patrolman Ned Muldoon of the Strong Arm Squad.

Yellowthread Street

• Yellowthread Street (1975)
• The Hatchet Man (1976)
• Gelignite (1976)
• Thin Air (1977)
• Skulduggery (1979)
• Sci Fi (1981)
• Perfect End (1981)
• War Machine (1982)
• The Far Away Man (1984), London, Secker and Warburg, ISBN 0-436-27323-3
• Roadshow (1985)
• Head First (1986)
• Frogmouth (1987)
• Out of Nowhere (1988)
• Inches (1994)
• Nightmare Syndrome (1997)
• To the End (1998)

Other works

• The Fire Circle Melbourne, Macmillan (1969)
• The Age of Death New York, Viking Press ISBN 0-670-10961-4 (1971)
• Whisper: a Manilla Bay mystery New York, Viking Press ISBN 0-670-81959-X (1988)
• Faces In The Crowd New York, Mysterious Press edition ISBN 0-446-40162-5 (1991)

References

External links

• Bibliography at the National Library of Australia