A comment from Sergio, Mr. Tipping My Fedora, to my previous post Notes on Noir Fiction, has remind me of Armitage Trail and his novel Scarface. Please find a short bio of Armitage Trail at Mystery File here.
Armitage Trail was a pseudonym for the American author Maurice Coons (1902-1930) best known for his 1929 novel Scarface, depicting the rise of gangster Al Capone, which was adapted into the 1932 film Scarface directed by Howard Hawks and produced by Howard Hughes. The film was loosely remade as 1983’s Scarface. He also wrote the 1929 novel on which the 1932 film The Thirteenth Guest was based. He died suddenly, of a heart attack, at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles (from Wikipedia). Both his novels prefigure the birth of hard-boiled fiction and Black Mask magazine (from Mystery File).
A Crime is Afoot 