George Caryl Sims (May 30, 1902 – June 23, 1966), better known by his pen names Paul Cain and Peter Ruric, was an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter.
[3][4] Lee Server, author of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, called Fast One "a cold-hearted, machine-gun-paced masterwork" and his other writings "gemlike, stoic and merciless vignettes that seemed to come direct from the bootlegging front lines.
[3] The events of Sims' life have been difficult for later biographers to verify,[6] in part because of his obscurity and in part because during his life, he frequently embellished his story with colorful and even outlandish statements, such as that he "wandered over South America, Europe, northern Africa and the Near East" and had published books titled Young Man Sees God, Hypersensualism: A Practical Philosophy for Acrobats and Seven Men Named Caesar, none of which is true.
He also began his career in Hollywood, including working as an assistant on the Josef von Sternberg films The Salvation Hunters (1925) and A Woman of the Sea (1926).
[1][11] The New York Times described it as “a ceaseless welter of bloodshed and frenzy, a sustained bedlam of killing and fiendishness, told in terse staccato style.”[12] Sims and Michael broke up in 1933.
"[13] Sims continued to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood under the name "Peter Ruric", contributing not only the script for 1934's The Black Cat, his most famous movie, but 1934's Affairs of a Gentleman, 1942's Grand Central Murder, and 1944's Guy de Maupassant adaptation Mademoiselle Fifi.
[15] In the field of hardboiled noir fiction, a genre already known for its starkness and cynicism, Sims' writing as Paul Cain was notable for its cold, brutal nihilism.
"[1] Wall Street Journal reviewer Lee Sandlin was more negative, calling him derivative of his Black Mask predecessor Hammett: "Cain wasn't any good.
The 1933 New York Times review of Fast One called the lead character, gangster Gerry Kells, "so ferocious a hoodlum ... a sot, drug addict, two-gun deadshot.
Washington Post literary critic Michael Dirda called Cain's style "lean, stripped-down prose, affectless narrative voice" leavened by touches of "wry humor".
In 1955, now living in Europe and suffering from poor health, Sims married again, this time to a young Virginia woman named Peggy Gregson who was 30 years younger than him; the couple had two sons.