Loren Singer


 * For the JAG character see Lieutenant Loren Singer, USN (JAGC).

Loren Adelson Singer (5 March 1923, Buffalo, New York – 19 December 2009, Valhalla, New York) was an American novelist, known best for his 1970 political thriller, The Parallax View, which was made as a successful 1974 movie, of the same name.

Singer was born in Buffalo, New York on March 5, 1923. After he completed high school he enlisted with the United States Army. He was sent to Yale University by the Office of Strategic Services to study the Malay language, but the war ended before he could serve active duty. While with the OSS, Singer learned details of covert operations that became the theme of many of his novels. After the war ended, Singer earned an undergraduate degree in English from the Ohio State University during 1947.

He married Erma Rosenstadt during 1947, and the couple relocated to New York City during the early 1950s. There Singer worked for his father-in-law's printing business while he wrote for such television programs as Kraft Television Theater, Studio One and Westinghouse Playhouse.

His 1970 novel The Parallax View is the story of a reporter who investigates a series of deaths of witnesses of the assassination of a presidential candidate, whose death had been attributed to a lone gunman. The book was published during 1970 at a time when there was still much controversy concerning a series of political assassinations during the previous decade. The book allowed him to quit his job as a printing salesman working for his father-in-law. The movie featured actors Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, William Daniels, and Paula Prentiss.

Other novels Singer wrote included the 1973 police procedural That's the House, There, in which the story is told as the telephone conversations of a police sergeant, while his 1974 book Boca Grande involves intrigue in Cuba concerning a Bahamas-Jamaica yacht race. His 1993 novel Making Good is the story of a conspiracy discovered by U.S. Army soldiers who discover a trove of art looted by the Germans during World War 2.

A resident of Mamaroneck, New York, Singer died on December 19, 2009, aged 86. He was survived by his wife, three sons and six grandchildren.