A guitarist, in the 1950s Garfield toured with a band called the Palisades, who released a single on the
Calico label. He served in the U.S. Army and the Army Reserves from 1957 to 1965. His first novel,
Range Justice, written when he was eighteen, was published in 1960. By the end of the following decade, he had published sixty novels. Once he turned fifty, Garfield continued to publish, but at a less prolific rate. In 1972 he published
Death Wish, which was adapted into the
film of the same title. Four movie
sequels followed, all starring
Charles Bronson in the lead role.
Bruce Willis starred in a
2018 remake. Garfield was directly involved only in the original movie. He wrote a sequel,
Death Sentence (1975), which was very loosely adapted into the 2007
film of the same name. While the film had a different storyline, it adopted the novel's critical perspective on vigilantism.
Hopscotch, also published in 1975, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Garfield wrote the screenplay for the
1980 film adaptation starring
Walter Matthau,
Glenda Jackson and
Sam Waterston. In 1970, Garfield was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize for History for
The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians. His last book, published in 2007, was a critical biography of the controversial British intelligence officer
Richard Meinertzhagen. He and his wife Bina divided their time between their homes in
Pasadena, California, and
Santa Fe, New Mexico. ==Death==