Trail, Armitage

Armitage Trail, the pseudonym of American author Maurice Coons, was born in Nebraska in 1903, the oldest child of Oscar and Alice Coons. He left school at sixteen to pursue a writing career and began selling short stories to magazines soon after. By his early twenties, he was publishing under a variety of pen names in several detective-story serials. In the early 1920s, Coons moved with his family to Chicago; it was here that he indulged his fascination with gangsters; spending many hours exploring areas of the city controlled by the mobs. By his early twenties he was writing whole issues of various pulp fiction magazines under an assortment of names, but his desire was to write the definitive novel of gangland life, based on Al Capone. That book, Scarface was published in January, 1930, a year after the publication of his first manuscript, The Thirteenth Guest. In April, 1930, Coons moved to Los Angeles, California and sold the film rights to Scarface to Howard Hughes. He died, suddenly, in October, 1930, at the age of twenty-eight.

Sources:

United States Federal Census. Year: 1910; Census Place: Kansas Ward 12, Jackson, Missouri; Roll: T624_785; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0050; FHL microfilm: 1374798

Hubin, Allen J. Crime Fiction II: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1749-1990, Volume I, Garland Publishers, NY, 1994.