Trivia

Crime novelist who focused on characterization and the psychological effects of corruption in the big city. As a soldier, then a police reporter, he contributed realism to mystery writing. In 1980 he was elected President of the Mystery Writers of America.

He died of cancer in 1982. One year later, his daughter Megan McGivern Shaw also died of the disease on December 31, 1983. His widow Maureen Daly McGivern died a hospice in Palm Desert, California of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on September 25, 2006. His son Patrick Joseph McGivern III passed away on July 10, 2012 in Indio, California.