About
Born in 1945, Kent Anderson grew up in North Carolina. At the age of 19 he joined the Merchant Marines and travelled the world (Pacific, Mediterranean), for two years. By his 23rd birthday he was a Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam. Then he successively was a police officer in Portland, in Oakland (California), and a English teacher… Somewhere in the course of these many professional lives, he studied Fiction Writing at the University of Montana. He uses his eventful life as raw material for his books. And if his dark realistic writings was first considered unfit for commercial success, Kent Anderson is now considered as one of the greatest Viet Nam war author.
Autobiography for Quais du Polar
‘Apparently, I cannot be killed. I have renounced death and stopped waiting for it – Soon. One of these days. Maybe next month when weather permits – it will come to me and take me away far from this hard work that I never really get to understand, I still think of it as a friend, an old age companion, but I know now that I cannot rely on it like I used to. I have realised that nobody is perfect, not even death. Ok. So, I’m just going to continue this way, sitting at my computer, looking out of the window to see what will come next.’
Crime favourites
Film: The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton, with Robert Mitchum, Terry Sanders
Book: The Big Knockover, Dashiell Hammett
Author: Dashiell Hammett