 His trilogy, "The Banker", "The Family", and "The American" garnered recognition, landing the last title on "The New York Times" bestseller list.Waller became known as a go-to man for novelizations and produced the novels for "Dog Day Afternoon" (under the pseudonym Patrick Mann), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Hide in Plain Sight".Waller also collaborated with Arnold Drake in 1950 to create an early graphic novel, "It Rhymes With Lust".