Archive - December 7, 2009

Roy Hoopes who wrote, among many other books, The Complete Peace Corps Guide, for Dial Press back in 1968, and was a long time Washington journalist died last week in Silver Springs Maryland. In his lifetime he wrote 30 plus books. Hoopes is best known for his 1982 biography of James M. Cain, who wrote the hard-boiled classics The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity. The story goes that  Hoopes read an article Cain wrote for the Washington Post in 1975 about columnist Walter Lippmann, and then found Cain, and all-but-forgotten novelist living alone in Hyattsville, Md.  Hoopes wrote a profile of Cain for Washingtonian magazine and talked extensively with Cain before the 85-year-old author died in 1977. The very definition of a professional writer who lived by his typewriter, Roy Hoopes contributed to hundreds of publications and held many jobs with magazines, newspapers and federal agencies. He wrote . . .