‘At an early age I was abandoned by wolves and raised by my parents.’ : Crime pays, but isn’t as lucrative as doing appendectomies.

Crime pays, Mark Schorr has discovered. Not well, but it pays.

Two years ago the 32-year-old Burbank man cut the umbilical of gainful employment to write mystery novels full time.

Schorr’s is a noble occupation, as anyone who ever called in sick in order to be comforted yet again by “The Big Sleep” can tell you. But it isn’t as lucrative as doing appendectomies, which might have been his lot had he not taken organic chemistry in college and “realized I’d have to go to med school in the Philippines.”

Schorr’s first book, “Red Diamond, Private Eye,” was nominated for an Edgar, the prize mystery writers want to win before they get an Oscar for the screenplay. His fourth, published last year, features a sleuth named Teddy Roosevelt.

“Bully!” Schorr recalled in a recent interview over lunch, was conceived in a bar during a boozy brainstorming session with his New York agent. Schorr wanted to do a whodunnit with a presidential angle (hey, it works for Margaret Truman) but didn’t like the idea of a protagonist named Ike.

“What’s he going to do?” Schorr asked. “Chase people with his golf clubs?”

St. Martin’s published “Bully!” as well as Schorr’s earlier books. “They’re a good house,” Schorr said. “I have the same publisher as Mr. T.”

Schorr traces his interest in violence back to his childhood in Brooklyn, where “organized crime was the great natural resource.” Schorr’s gang took cello lessons instead of scalps, but the future crime writer (first as an investigative reporter) was fascinated with the local bad boys.

“I knew the name of every two-bit hood in Brooklyn. It was great fun at parties,” he said. “I’m not so interested in crimes of passion. Anybody can get mad and hit somebody on the head with a skillet. But organized crime has a certain sophistication.” Intrigued by the exotic sleaziness of the Mob, Schorr also savored the tough richness of its private language. “ This sounds like a mobster,” he said, quoting from the menu: “Louis Salad.”

As a published mystery writer, Schorr gets to do amusing things like sign autographs at Boucher Con, the annual gathering of people who believe John D. MacDonald improves the quality of life and Tony Hillerman makes life worth living. (Schorr is co-moderator of “Crime on Their Minds,” a UCLA Extension course on the mystery novel that will run seven Wednesday nights, starting Jan. 22, at Taft High School in Woodland Hills.)

Schorr approaches an interview smiling but with the reflexive wariness of a former newsman. His informed caution doesn’t prevent him from being good copy, however, the quality that journalists regard as the greatest good. Schorr, who is smart, cute, nice and funny, could be mean as a snake, and I’d follow him anywhere. When you ask him about his childhood, he answers, “At an early age I was abandoned by wolves and raised by my parents.”

Schorr admires many of his fellow mystery writers. Raymond Chandler is his god. He didn’t reread and analyze his favorite whydunnits before he first sat down to write his own. He simply listened to the voice of Chandler whispering in his ear. “I had read Chandler enough so that I could recite parts by heart,” he said, citing such immortal one-liners as, “The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.” Schorr also saw the original “The Big Sleep” 23 times, as evidenced by his uncanny imitation of Humphrey Bogart snarling: “Get up off the floor, angel. You look like a Pekingese.”

Schorr isn’t one of those novelists who seems to be saying, “I spent a lot of money on my education, and you’re going to know about it.” There are no references to “Tristram Shandy” in his oeuvre, as he pointed out. But he is deadly serious about his work, easy to forget in the course of laughing at the jokes. But then even the gags have a serious function. “Humor has always been my way of coping with the miseries of life,” said Schorr, who pointed out that humor is a given “in newsrooms, police stations, morgues and hospitals, places where there’s a lot of human suffering.”

Like other successful practitioners of the genre, Schorr knows that good mysteries work in mysterious ways, consoling their readers even as they entertain them. “It’s a very reassuring form. Things are put back in order.” In a world of chaos, heroic problem-solvers like Dave Brandstetter, Spenser and Hercule Poirot are the kindest of lies.

Schorr recently finished his fifth book, a suspense novel. “You can reach a larger market with a spy novel,” he explained, “and you have a better chance of breaking onto the best-seller list.” “Bully!” incorporated large chunks of historical fact, including the revelation that T. R. was a jogger in era when most people “thought it was stupid to run unless you were being chased.”

Schorr’s espionage book will also be full of facts. “One of the tricks of writing a best seller is to include a nonfiction angle so people feel they’re learning something.”

Schorr loved kissing staff reporting goodby to write full time. His last job, which lasted a long two months, was at USA Today, a writer’s paper only if you truly believe that brevity is the soul of wit, and what writer does? “The pay was nice,” he recalled, “but I could have spent it all on Valium.”

Now Schorr hustles for himself, not the Man, and enjoys the deeper, subtler pleasure of exercising a gift (there is no table talk of art). He also likes the advances and royalty checks. Independence is grand, of course, but it doesn’t pay the rent.

“It’s great,” Schorr said, “when the money dribbles in.”