Ed Lacy was the pen name of Leonard Zinberg (1911-1968), an American novelist and crime writer best known for hardboiled, noir, and socially alert mystery fiction. He wrote a substantial body of mid-century crime novels, including Lead With Your Left, The Best That Ever Did It, Room to Swing, Breathe No More, My Lady, and other works that combined speed, urban detail, violence, and moral unease. His fiction often moves through police work, private investigation, political pressure, race, class, and the compromises of American city life.Lacy's best-known novel, Room to Swing, won the Edgar Award and helped distinguish him from many paperback-era crime writers by combining hardboiled momentum with social observation and a willingness to confront American racism more directly than much crime fiction of its period. In Lead With Your Left, Lacy brings that same practical toughness to the police procedural, following a young detective through the detail work, danger, and uncertainty of a murder case. For readers of classic noir, hardboiled mystery, vintage police novels, and mid-century American crime fiction, Ed Lacy remains a strong and under-read name.