After receiving a degree in film from the University of Southern California, he traveled to Europe and taught English for Berlitz in Barcelona, Spain.
He later edited textbooks before becoming managing editor of Radio & Records, a radio-industry trade magazine.
[2] Lange is the author of the novels Joe Hustle(Little, Brown/Mulholland 2024), Rovers (Little, Brown/Mulholland 2021),[3] The Smack (Little, Brown/Mulholland 2017), Angel Baby (Little, Brown/Mulholland, 2013), which won the 2013 Hammett Prize, and This Wicked World (Little, Brown, 2009) and the short story collections Sweet Nothing (Little, Brown/Mulholland, 2015) and Dead Boys (Little, Brown, 2007).
"Apocrypha" was awarded the 2015 Short Story Dagger by Great Britain's Crime Writers' Association.
Lange was the 2008 recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a finalist for the 2008 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.