Darcy O'Brien was an American award-winning author of fiction and literary criticism, most well known for his work in the genre of true crime. His first novel, A Way of Life, Like Any Other, was a fictionalized account of his childhood in Hollywood. In 1985, he wrote a book about the Hillside Stranglers entitled Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers, which was adapted into a made-for-television film called The Case of the Hillside Stranglers, starring Richard Crenna.