William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty was born in New York in 1928 to Lebanese immigrant parents. His family was poor and moved often because it could not keep up with the rent. A scholarship took him to Georgetown University, where Jesuit teachers shaped him and where he graduated in English in 1950. He started out as a comic novelist, then spent about four decades writing for Hollywood. He died in 2017, at 89.

He is shelved under horror, but the label fits only partly. The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration and Legion keep asking one question: how can anyone believe in a good God in a world with this much suffering? Blatty came to these books from comedy. His priests and detectives talk, argue and joke, and the dread arrives in the pauses.

The Exorcist came out from Harper & Row in 1971. It grew from a reported 1949 exorcism case he heard about as a Georgetown student. It spent 57 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, 17 of them at number one. He wrote and produced the 1973 film, which won him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and a Best Picture nomination. He reworked his earlier novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane into The Ninth Configuration (1978) and directed its 1980 film. His novel Legion (1983) became The Exorcist III (1990), which he also directed. In 1998 he received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Start with The Exorcist. It is still the most direct version of what he cared about. If it leaves you wanting more, read Legion next. It follows Lieutenant Kinderman, the detective from the first book, into a murder case that unsettles his own doubts.