Orrie Hitt (1916-1975) was an American novelist best known for his prolific output of paperback-original crime, noir, and exploitation fiction during the 1950s and 1960s. Working at remarkable speed, Hitt wrote novels that captured the rougher edges of postwar American life: failed marriages, small-town pressure, sexual jealousy, class resentment, ambition, corruption, and the desperate compromises made by people with few good choices left.Though often marketed through the lurid covers and sensational copy of the paperback era, Hitt's work has remained of interest to readers and collectors because of its pace, directness, and unsentimental view of ordinary people under pressure. His novels belong to the same broad world of mid-century noir and paperback crime fiction that exposed the darker side of American respectability: the roadhouses, cheap apartments, strained marriages, dangerous affairs, and bad decisions hidden behind the surface of everyday life. For readers of vintage crime fiction, noir melodrama, hard-boiled suspense, and classic paperback originals, Hitt remains a distinctive and highly readable figure.