Anyone's My Name

by Seymour Shubin

Published in 1953, Anyone's My Name appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, was published abroad and critically reviewed. The novel, which deals with a crime of passion and capital punishment, has been used in university criminology courses throughout the United States. This novel is the story of a fact-detective magazine writer who gets caught up in the personal lives of a case he writes for a magazine. Though published over 40 years ago, it has refused to simply lie down and die. Not only have readers continued to flood the author with letters, but the distinguished house of Gallimard has recently published it in France.

295 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Majored in journalism at Temple University and began his career editing a detective magazine. His first novel was Manta which was published in Great Britain and his second novel Anyone's My Name was a best-seller.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seymour Shubin began his writing career as an associate editor for a true-crime magazine, a background that he exploited in his debut novel, Anyone’s My Name. The novel’s narrator, Paul Weiler, is true-crime writer whose vocation greases his slippery slope into crime. Just as the novel’s title promises, Shubin milks the Everyman theme for every last drop of pathos, but with enough aplomb and cleverness to earn a spot in the canon of 1950s Noir Well Worth Seeking Out.

[Carl Brookins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is an inside look at the psychology of murder. It is also an insider’s look at the cynical world of the true crime publishing industry. This novel, for it is fiction, follows the travails of a correspondent in the employ, under various pen names, of several magazines which bill themselves as the tellers of truth, those who purport to reveal and explain the awful crimes that beset our society. It is clear that the author did his research. The narrative is compelling and suspenseful.

The novel is set in a time before television, before the Internet; it was a time when Police Gazette and True Detective, and similar magazines, crowded the newsstands in greater profusion than they do today. Anyone’s My Name was written by an author who worked in the true crime magazine business, and the insider views are present throughout the book. The story follows the young correspondent through several changing relationships in his life,in his marriage, with a particular editor, and the subjects of his articles and exposes. Here the rerader will watch the protagonist’s changing relationships with the police. The novel draws heavily on the technique of interior monologues and is written in a style which reflects the time in which it was originally published, 1953. Yet, it is testament to the skill and ability of author Shubin that the style and language hold up as well today as when the novel was first published.

Anyone’s My Name will not please those looking for a quick, summer beach-read, nor those for whom the explosiveness of the action-thriller is required. But for those readers who wish to contemplate the motivations and examine the darker corners of the minds of the murderers among us, here is a novel to be savored.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great noir novels.

[Wesley Mead · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intelligent, compelling look at the life of a crime write going entirely off the rails. Extremely bleak but very readable.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

my book was published in 1953. i think it is the sameone. a very very strange story of crime writer turning into a murderer. odd odd odd but i enjoyed it