Doug Richardson was born in Arcadia, California. The son of a career politician, Doug did most of his growing up on a small ranch in the rural foothills outside Sacramento. He was twelve when he discovered his father's collection of Ian Fleming's James Bond paperbacks on a shelf in his parent's converted garage. What followed was a teenage obsession with the film series and then cinema in general.
Though Doug attended The USC School for Cinematic Arts with ambitions to become a movie director, while there he discovered his affection for writing screenplays. After leaving USC, Doug directed a few educational films, but his sights remained set on Hollywood. After reading some of his first screenplays, Warner Brothers offered Doug a two-year contract-one of the last "paid by the week" studio writer gigs.
In 1989 20th Century Fox hired Doug to adapt Walter Wager's novel 58 Minutes into the first sequel to the hit franchise Die Hard. In 1990, it was released as Die Hard 2, Die Harder. Around the same period, Doug and his one-time writing partner, Rick Jaffa, garnered national attention when their spec screenplay, Hellbent...and Back was the first in Hollywood to sell for a million dollars. Doug has since written and produced feature films including the box office smash Bad Boys (1995), Money Train (1995), and Hostage (2005). In 2004, Doug produced the comedy Welcome to Mooseport.
While in between movie projects, Doug managed to finish his first novel, Dark Horse. The political thriller was published in 1997 by Avon/Morrow, who released Doug's second novel True Believers two years later.
While Doug continues to work in Hollywood developing motion pictures and TV pilots, he finds writing novels provides him the greatest satisfaction and reward. 2011's The Safety Expert marked Doug's return to penning novels and is his first modern-day L.A. Noir thriller. In 2013's Blood Money, Doug introduced readers to Lucky Dey, an on-again/off-again Los Angeles County Sheriff's detective who is both willful and acerbic to a dangerous fault.
99 Percent Kill, A Lucky Dey Thriller (2015) is the first of Doug's Lucky Dey series. With his "uncanny ability to glimpse into the brutality and instability not only of the criminal mind, but also a darkness in the heroes" (IndieReader), Doug winds readers through a sinister L.A. landscape where unlikely worlds intersect to create a stew of tension and suspense. Lucky Dey returns in Doug's forthcoming thriller, Reaper: A Lucky Dey Thriller, coming May 2016.
In addition to writing for the screen and print, Doug posts a weekly blog on his website, dougrichardson.com, where he shares personal anecdotes and insight from his thirty-year showbiz career. The first collection of his blogs, The Smoking Gun: True Tales from Hollywood's Screenwriting Trenches was published in 2015.
While not behind his computer Doug enjoys hitting little white balls towards faraway holes, fine cigars, and a smooth glass of scotch on the rocks. He lives in Southern California with his wife, two children and four mutts.
