Peter Maas wrote about crooks and cops, people's corruption and integrity, often featuring real people and unrelentingly factual stories. He grew up in the Hamilton Heights area of New York City's upper west side, where his community was a mix of German, Jewish, and Irish families. Maas himself was of Dutch and Irish descent, and he liked to tell the story that his name, pronounced "mace" in Irish means "thighbone" and "moss" in Dutch means "mace" - a club.
Maas' affinity for the blending of types and portrayals of people is evident in his work, where distinguishing between heroes and villains can be a difficult task. He began his writing career while still a political science major at Duke University in the late 1940s, and it was during this time that he received a big scoop for an exclusive interview with Walter Reuther, the then-president of the United Auto Workers union.
After college and a brief stint in Paris, France, Maas enlisted in the navy during the Korean War. Following his time in the navy, he joined Collier's magazine, but his time there was brief, as the magazine ceased publishing in January 1957. Maas then found temporary work on a lobster boat, before eventually writing for Look magazine, where he gained national prominence with a piece about a black death-row inmate in Angola, Louisiana, who had been on death row for 14 years.
Maas eventually moved to the Saturday Evening Post, where he hit upon one of his greatest scoops - a slip of the tongue by then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy about the Mafia informant Joe Valachi. The government was reluctant to allow Maas to publish Valachi's story, claiming that public exposure would be "detrimental to law enforcement." Consequently, Maas had to take the government to court in order to gain the rights to publish his book, which became a best seller and was later adapted into a movie.
Other notable non-fiction publishing and movie achievements for Peter Maas include the story of Frank Serpico's efforts against police corruption, the chronicle of a power struggle among three generations of a Gypsy "royal family," one woman's fight to end corruption involving the Tennessee state house, the heroic rescue of a pre-WWII sunken submarine, and the plight of a baby boy effectively orphaned by his father's murder of his mother and soon caught in a fight between his parents' families for his custody.
Maas has also published the fictional "Made in America," which recounts the melding of right and wrong, villain and hero, up and down in telling the story of an average, law-abiding citizen given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for riches if only he can get a hold of the right amount of money.
