William Riley Burnett 25 Kasım 1899,Springfield, Ohio doğumludur, Daha çok W. R. Burnett diye tanınan romancı, senaryo yazarlığı da yapmıştır. Little Caesar romanından uyarlanan film, Amerikan sinema tarihine ilk gangster klasiği olarak geçmiştir.

Romanlar
1929 Little Caesar
1931 The Silver Eagle
1932 The Giant Swing
1932 Iron Man
1932 "Saint" Johnson
1933 Dark Hazard
1934 Goodbye to the Past: Scenes from the Life of William Meadows
1934 The Goodhues of Sinking Creek
1936 King Cole
1938 The Dark Command: A Kansas Iliad
1940 High Sierra
1942 The Quick Brown Fox
1943 Nobody Lives Forever
1945 Tomorrow's Another Day (Yarın Başka Bir Gündür)
1946 Romelle
1949 The Asphalt Jungle
1950 Stretch Dawson
1951 Little Men, Big World
1952 Vanity Row
1953 Adobe Walls: A Novel of the Last Apache Rising
1953 Big Stan (John Monahan adı altında)
1954 Captain Lightfoot
1956 It's Always Four O'Clock (James Updyke adı altında)
1956 Pale Moon
1957 Underdog
1958 Bitter Ground
1959 Mi Amigo: A Novel of the Southwest
1961 Conant
1961 Round the Clock at Volari's
1962 The Goldseekers
1962 The Widow Barony
1963 The Abilene Samson
1963 Sergeants 3
1964 The Roar of the Crowd: Conversations With an Ex-Big-Leaguer
1965 The Winning of Mickey Free
1968 The Cool Man
1981 Goodbye, Chicago: 1928, End of an Era