Room Service

ROOM SERVICE: For about ten years, Miles Farrington had known that his wife, Brenda, had been unfaithful to him. He had not done anything about it. He had not had affairs with other women. He devoted himself to business, to his hobbies and to philanthropy, and he tried to convince himself that he was leading a full life. But the time had come when he could no longer evade the issue. His friends were telling him about Brenda’s affair. She was being openly, boastfully, adulterous and Miles realized that he was a fool, not a saint, in the eyes of the world. Something would have to be done. It would have to be something involving action, direct action…

Alan Williams was born Louis William Lowenthal on June 13, 1890, in Washington, DC, of German Jewish immigrants. At age 20 he joined the Immigration Service and was assigned a post in Alaska, where he handled enough high profile cases that he was hired as personal secretary to the governor of Arizona. Leaving the world of politics behind, he moved to New York where redefined himself as Alan Williams. As Williams he wrote over 200 stories, then moved to California in the 1930s to become a novelist. His most critically acclaimed novel was Room Service, published in 1936. Williams gave up writing in the 1940s and opened a Los Angeles bookstore. After years of ill-health, he drowned off Long Beach on November 2, 1945, an apparent suicide.