Murray Sinclair is best known for his hard-boiled Ben Crandel series, a trio of Los Angeles-based mystery novels about a down-on-his luck writer set in the criminal underbelly of early 1980s Hollywood. The stories touch on the adult entertainment industry, political corruption, Neo-Nazis (circa 1980), and the moral majority led fearlessly by corrupt evangelists. The first of the three, Tough Luck L.A., received the Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Original Paperback. In 1988, Tough Luck L.A. and its sequels, Only in L.A. and Goodbye L.A.  were among the few new books published by Black Lizard Books, the legendary crime fiction  press whose selections are widely regarded as hardboiled canon. In 2019, the series was reissued by The Mysterious Press.