Norman Bogner (November 13, 1935 – December 12, 2022)[1] was a New York Times Bestselling- author whose range of work has included several novels such as Seventh Avenue, The Deadliest Art, To Die in Provence and The Madonna Complex, as well as stage plays, and movie and television scripts.

According to Bogner, after several trips with his father across the United States, he knew traveling in Europe was what he needed to learn more about the real people he was going to write about.

To earn the money he needed to follow through on his plan, this meant Bogner went back to doing the kitchen work he’d done at resorts and restaurants in the Catskill Mountains and at Cape Cod during the summers while in school.

[2][3] Starting his tour in Barcelona, Bogner began his European education learning to speak a language that he knew how to read, yet had never used in any real setting.

As noted by Gale’s Literature Resource Library: “According to Susan R. Cox in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, he completed the novel in Spain and then got a job in a department store in England, 'before leaving his precious manuscript in the front office of the only London publishing house he'd heard of.

Among the authors whose works he edited were: John Fowles, Edna O'Brien, Ronald Harwood, Arnold Wesker, C. Day Lewis, and A. W. Lawrence.

In addition, he also edited Derek Walcott's first volume of poetry, two novels by Claude Simon, and Alan Paton's book of short stories, Debbie Go Home.

He also discovered and commissioned a number of then-unknown writers, including Tom Stoppard, Alan Ayckbourn, Charles Wood, and Dennis Potter.

In 1981, he published California Dreamers saying, “I’d been wanting to write a book about Southern California … It’s taken me six years to get a fix on the area, to understand the way things work here.”[6] For the next 15 years Bogner worked as a script doctor in the film and television industry, not coming out with another novel until 1998 when he published To Die in Provence (Forge, New York, 1998).

Rebecca gives up her career as a concert pianist, striking a bargain with Douglas Horne, a former lion hunter, to work together to solve the crime.