Michael Avallone; Prolific Writer Created Ed Noon

Michael Angelo Avallone, remarkably rapid and prolific writer whose 1,000 works included three dozen mystery novels featuring his alter-ego hero Ed Noon, has died. He was 74.

Avallone, who often said he would rather write than sleep or eat, died Friday in his sleep of heart failure at his Los Angeles home.

“I’ve been writing since I discovered pencils,” Avallone once said. He was born in New York, one of 17 children of a stonemason, and worked in a stationery store before and after serving in the Army in Europe during World War II.

He wrote school assignments, diaries, buddies’ love letters, Army news and in 1953 published his first novel, “The Tall Dolores,” starring Noon.

The romantic private detective, who conducted his secret agent-type assignments solely on orders of the U.S. president, aged right along with his creator through 36 adventures and 35 years. Noon was as addicted to and vociferous about baseball and Hollywood movies as Avallone. In the final book of the series, “High Noon at Midnight” in 1988, the detective voiced the author’s musings about old age.

But Avallone also wrote gothic novels, poetry, essays, movie reviews, novels based on television series like “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Partridge Family” and on movies including “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” “Shock Corridor” and “Cannonball Run.” He wrote science fiction, occult, sex and juvenile novels, short stories and liner notes for record album covers.

He used more than a dozen pseudonyms from the likely James Blaine, Nick Carter, Vance Stanton and Sidney Stuart to the unlikely Edwina Noone, Michele Alden, Memo Morgan and Dorothea Nile.

“A professional writer,” Avallone stated in his entry in Who’s Who in America, “should be able to write anything from the Bible to a garden seed catalog and everything there is that lies in between. . . . Writing is the last frontier of individualism in the world--the one art a man can do alone that basically resists collaboration.”

Based for many years in East Brunswick, N.J., Avallone styled himself as “the Fastest Typewriter in the East.” Few would dare argue.

He once completed a novel in a day and a half. Another time, he wrote a 1,500-word short story in 20 minutes while dining in a New York restaurant. In his all-time record year, he churned out 27 books.

Avallone, who enjoyed talking almost as much as writing, was a popular lecturer in high school and college writing classes from Columbia to Rutgers. But every entertaining talk included some strongly worded version of his adage: “The best advice any writer can give to another writer or someone who wants to write, which cannot be taught, is to write, write, write.”

Although Avallone said he toyed with the idea of acting, he became a writer out of love of the English language--the ability to make people conjure images by mentioning single words and further holding their attention by stringing the words together into a sentence. He said he wrote for the pleasure, rather than the gain of fame or money. Asked if he ever considered writing to be a painful exercise, he said: “Writing is my religion.”

Avallone was active in the Mystery Writers of America, serving as a director of both the New York chapter and the national organization. He also was chairman of its awards, television and motion picture committees.

The author is survived by his wife of 39 years, Fran; two sons, Stephen and David, and daughter, Susan.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the American Civil Liberties Union or to the Film Department of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.