Dorothy Simpson
Dorothy Preece Simpson writes...
"I was born and brought up in South Wales, went to Bridgend Grammar School and then on to Bristol University, where I read modern languages before moving to Kent, the background of the Thanet novels, to teach French at Dartford and Erith Grammar Schools.
Moving to the Maidstone area on my marriage, I then spent several years devoting myself to bringing up my three children. During that time I trained as a marriage guidance counsellor and subsequently worked as one for thirteen years.
You may think that marriage guidance counsellor to crime writer is rather a peculiar career move, but although I didn’t realise it at the time, of course, the training I received was the best possible preparation for writing detect
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Susan Isaacs
I was born in a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds. Oh, you want the truth. Fine. I was born in Brooklyn and educated at Queens College. After leaving school, I saw one of those ads: BE A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER! Take our aptitude test. Since I had nothing else in mind, I took the test-and flunked. The guy at the employment agency looked at my resume and mumbled, “You wrote for your college paper? Uh, we have an opening at Seventeen magazine.” That’s how I became a writer.
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I liked my job, but I found doing advice to the lovelorn and articles like “How to Write a Letter to a Boy” somewhat short of fulfilling. So, first as a volunteer, then for actual money, I wrote political speeches in my spare time. I did less of that when I met a wonderful guy, -
Helene Tursten
Helene Tursten (born in Gothenburg in 1954) is a Swedish writer of crime fiction. The main character in her stories is Detective Inspector Irene Huss. Before becoming an author, Tursten worked as a nurse and then a dentist, but was forced to leave due to illness. During her illness she worked as a translator of medical articles.
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Series:
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Michael J. Clark
Michael J. Clark started his writing career in the field of automotive journalism, winning national awards in Canada for his writing and photography in both print and online publications. After retiring from reporting on all things car in 2015, Michael completed his first novel, Clean Sweep. He lives in Winnipeg with his wife, Carol.
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Patricia Moyes
Moyes was born in Dublin on 19 January 1923 and was educated at Overstone girls' school in Northampton. She joined the WAAF in 1939. In 1946 Peter Ustinov hired her as technical assistant on his film School for Secrets. She became his personal assistant for the next eight years. In 1960 she wrote the screenplay for the film School for Scoundrels starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, and Alastair Sim. She married photographer John Moyes in 1951; they divorced in 1959. She later married James Haszard, a linguist at the International Monetary Fund in The Hague. She died at her home on the island of Virgin Gorda (British Virgin Islands) on 2 August 2000.
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Her mystery novels feature C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett. One of them, Who Saw Her Die (Ma -
Philip MacDonald
Philip MacDonald (who some give as 1896 or 1899 as his date of birth) was the grandson of the writer George MacDonald and son of the author Ronald MacDonald and the actress Constance Robertson.
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During World War I he served with the British cavalry in Mesopotamia, later trained horses for the army, and was a show jumper. He also raised Great Danes. After marrying the writer F. Ruth Howard, he moved to Hollywood in 1931. He was one of the most popular mystery writers of the 1930s, and between 1931 and 1963 wrote many screenplays along with a few radio and television scripts.
His detective novels, particularly those featuring his series detective Anthony Gethryn, are primarily "whodunnits" with the occasional locked room mystery. His first dete -
Giles Blunt
Giles Blunt (born 1952 in Windsor, Ontario) is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, Cold Eye, was a psychological thriller set in the New York art world, which was made into the French movie Les Couleurs du diable (Allain Jessua, 1997).
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He is also the author of the John Cardinal novels, set in the small town of Algonquin Bay, in Northern Ontario. Blunt grew up in North Bay, and Algonquin Bay is North Bay very thinly disguised — for example, Blunt retains the names of major streets and the two lakes (Trout Lake and Lake Nipissing) that the town sits between, the physical layout of the two places is the same, and he describes Algonquin Bay as being in the same geographical location as North Bay.
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Carlene Thompson
Carlene Thompson is an author of suspense thriller novels.
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Her first book, Black for Remembrance, was published in 1990 by Little, Brown and was well received. Her books are suspense novels, often with romantic elements and many take place in Thompson's home state of West Virginia. Her books often feature animals, which she bases on animals she knows in real life. -
Pamela Murray
Pamela Murray is a crime writer from the North East of England and is best known for the novels Murderland, Bloodline, and Duplicity, collectively known as The Manchester Murders. She had intended to follow a career in either art or journalism after school but chose to work in a library instead because of her love of books. Murderland, her debut novel, was only submitted to one publisher before being immediately accepted. She has now written a further eight books and is currently working on another. Pamela's writing style is gripping and suspenseful, making her a favourite among crime fiction enthusiasts.
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Scott Shepherd
Scott Shepherd is a veteran writer/producer/show-runner with years of experience running network series; his production and screenwriting credits include The Equalizer, Miami Vice, The Outer Limits, Haven, and Quantum Leap. Born in New York and raised in Los Angeles, he currently teaches television writing at the University of Texas in Austin. The Last Commandment is his first mystery novel.
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Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English Grandmother. As Josephine Tey, she wrote six mystery novels featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant.
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The first of these, The Man in the Queue (1929) was published under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot , whose name also appears on the title page of another of her 1929 novels, Kif; An Unvarnished History. She also used the Daviot by-line for a biography of the 17th century cavalry leader John Graham, which was entitled Claverhouse (1937).
Mackintosh also wrote plays (both one act and full length), some of which were produced during her lifetime, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. The district of Daviot, near h -
Elizabeth Daly
Elizabeth Daly (1878-1967) was born in New York City and educated at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She was a reader in English at Bryn Mawr and tutored in English and French. She was awarded an Edgar in 1960. Her series character is Henry Gamadge, an antiquarian book dealer.
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Daly works in the footsteps of Jane Austen, offering an extraordinarily clear picture of society in her time through the interactions of a few characters. In that tradition, if you knew a person's family history, general type, and a few personal quirks, you could be said to know everything worth knowing about that person. Today the emphasis is on baring the darkest depths of psycho- and socio-pathology; contemporary readers raised on this style -
Patricia Wentworth
Patricia Wentworth--born Dora Amy Elles--was a British crime fiction writer.
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She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey. She married George Oliver Turnbull in 1920 and they had one daughter.
She wrote a series of 32 classic-style whodunnits featuring Miss Silver, the first of which was published in 1928, and the last in 1961, the year of her death.
Miss Silver, a retired governess-turned private detective, is sometimes compared to Jane Marple, the elderly detective created by Agatha Christie. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott and is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson.
Wentworth also wr -
Patricia Moyes
Moyes was born in Dublin on 19 January 1923 and was educated at Overstone girls' school in Northampton. She joined the WAAF in 1939. In 1946 Peter Ustinov hired her as technical assistant on his film School for Secrets. She became his personal assistant for the next eight years. In 1960 she wrote the screenplay for the film School for Scoundrels starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, and Alastair Sim. She married photographer John Moyes in 1951; they divorced in 1959. She later married James Haszard, a linguist at the International Monetary Fund in The Hague. She died at her home on the island of Virgin Gorda (British Virgin Islands) on 2 August 2000.
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Her mystery novels feature C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett. One of them, Who Saw Her Die (Ma -
Ngaio Marsh
Dame Ngaio Marsh, born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900, but she was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.
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Of all the "Great Ladies" of the English mystery's golden age, including Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh alone survived to publish in the 1980s. Over a fifty-year span, from 1932 to 1982, Marsh wrote thirty-two classic English detective novels, which gained international acclaim. She did not always see herself as a writer, but first planned a career as a painter.
Marsh's first novel, A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), which she wrote in London in 1931-32, introdu -
George Bellairs
AKA Hilary Landon
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George Bellairs is the nom de plume of Harold Blundell, a crime writer and bank manager born in Heywood, near Rochdale, Lancashire, who settled in the Isle of Man on retirement. He wrote more than 50 books, most featuring the series' detective Inspector Littlejohn. He also wrote four novels under the alternative pseudonym Hilary Landon. -
E.C.R. Lorac
Edith Caroline Rivett (who wrote under the pseudonyms E.C.R. Lorac, Carol Carnac, Carol Rivett, and Mary le Bourne) was a British crime writer. She was born in Hendon, Middlesex (now London). She attended the South Hampstead High School, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.
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She was a member of the Detection Club. She was a very prolific writer, having written forty-eight mysteries under her first pen name, and twenty-three under her second. She was an important author of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. -
E.X. Ferrars
Aka Elizabeth Ferrars
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Elizabeth Ferrars is a pseudonym of Morna Doris MacTaggart Brown. She was born in Rangoon, Burma. -
Harriet Steel
Harriet Steel wrote several historical novels before turning to crime with the Inspector de Silva mysteries, inspired by time spent in Sri Lanka (the former Ceylon)). Her work has also appeared in national newspapers and magazines. Visit her website, https://harrietsteel.com/ to sign up to her monthly newsletter for information on new releases and offers.
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Harriet is married with two daughters and lives in Surrey. When she’s not writing, she likes reading, long walks and visiting art galleries and museums. -
Jane Steen
Dear Reader,
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Welcome to my page. Now, I could talk to you about myself in the third person, as if my author-self were someone else, but instead let me give you the Most Important Fact:
I was named after Jane Eyre.
I swear that this decision of my mother's influenced my entire life. I've always felt that I lead only half my existence here (here being wherever I happen to be) while the much more interesting stuff goes on in my head.
It also doomed me to spend most of that head-time in the nineteenth century, hence my books. My aim is to write entertaining fiction that hovers somewhere in the PG range (no graphic sex or nasty stuff unless the plot totally demands it) and is neither dumbed-down nor pretentiously intellectual. In short, it's the typ -
Karen Baugh Menuhin
1920's, Cozy crime, Traditional Detectives, Downton Abbey - I love them!
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Along with my family, my dog and my cat.
At 60 I decided to write, I don't know why but suddenly the stories came pouring out, along with the characters. Eccentric Uncles, stalwart butlers, idiosyncratic servants, machinating Countesses, Fogg the dog and the hapless Major Heathcliff Lennox.
Suddenly a whole world built itself upon the page and I just followed along. -
B.L. Pearce
Biba Pearce is an English crime writer and author of the DCI Rob Miller series. Published by Joffe Books.
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Biba lives in Surrey, in the United Kingdom and when she isn't writing, can be found hiking through the countryside or kayaking on the River Thames.
Visit Biba at www.blpearce.com. -
Eliza Reid
Eliza Reid is a bestselling writer, public speaker, gender equality advocate, cofounder of the acclaimed Iceland Writers Retreat and former first lady of Iceland. She was born and raised in Canada but has lived in Iceland for over twenty years. Eliza’s first book, Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World, was an instant bestseller in Canada and Iceland, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Pick, and translated into numerous languages. Her first novel, an Iceland-set mystery called Death of a Diplomat (Death on the Island in North America.), will be published in spring 2025 and has been optioned for television.
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From 2016 to 2024, Eliza served in the unofficial role of First Lady while her hu -
N.M. Brown
Norman has enjoyed writing for more than two decades. He has always considered a combination of decent fiction and good coffee as providing the best way to unwind and slip out of ordinary life for a while.
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Having grown up Central Scotland, he studied English at Stirling University, where he began penning poetry, drama scripts and short stories. However, his real commitment to writing resulted from spending a snowy winter attending a series of fireside writing workshops in Perth.
Norman’s love of crime fiction led him to create the weary detective Leighton Jones. Having based his debut novel around this character, Norman felt so intrigued by him that he decided to give Jones at least two more outings.
He has found the way in which readers re -
Catherine Aird
Kinn Hamilton McIntosh, known professionally as Catherine Aird, was an English novelist. She was the author of more than twenty crime fiction novels and several collections of short stories. Her witty, literate, and deftly plotted novels straddle the "cozy" and "police procedural" genres and are somewhat similar in flavour to those of Martha Grimes, Caroline Graham, M.C. Beaton, Margaret Yorke, and Pauline Bell. Aird was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1981, and is a recipient of the 2015 Cartier Diamond Dagger award.
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Michael Gruber
Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist.
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He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolved. After the partnership with Tanenbaum ended, Gruber began publishing his own novels under William Morrow and HarperCollins.
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Anna Porter
Anna (Szigethy) Porter began her Canadian publishing career in 1969 at McClelland & Stewart (M&S) as editorial coordinator, under Jack McClelland’s directorship. Porter eventually rose to become VP and editor-in-chief at M&S. She worked with, among others, Margaret Laurence, Matt Cohen, Al Purdy, Irving Layton, Peter C Newman and Margaret Atwood.
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Porter started her publishing company, Key Porter Books, in partnership with Key Publishers' Michael de Pencier in 1982. They published, among others, Allan Fotheringham, Jean Chretien, Joe Clark, Margaret Atwood, Peter Lougheed, Fred Bruemmer and Conrad Black.
Anna Porter is an Officer of the Order of Canada and the recipient of the Order of Ontario.
Anna Porter retired from publishing in April 2005 -
Mairi Chong
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Mairi grew up in the north-east of Scotland. The dramatic coastal village proved to be the perfect back-drop for imaginative play alongside her brothers.
"The neighbours must have hated us. We were always up on someone's shed roof tracking down smugglers, or digging in a ditch, hoping to unearth hidden treasure!"
Mairi read voraciously from a young age. Both her father and grandfather were great storytellers and read aloud to her, encouraging her to invent stories of her own. Their support led her to gaining a scholarship to study creative writing at a prestigious summer school.
In reading, she gravitated towards crime fiction, beginning with Agatha Christie, and moving on to Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey.
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Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Mysteries and the Julie Hayes Mysteries; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.
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Dudley Lynch
Dudley Lynch has published by-lined articles in 250 periodicals on six continents, including Reader's Digest, Business Week, Newsweek, Fortune Magazine (special sections), The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and The Economist. His book, Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World (written with a colleague), was a Literary Guild alternative section, has been published in seven languages and made best-seller lists in France, Germany and Austria. Your High-Performance Business Brain was a Macmillan Book Club selection. The President from Texas was the first young-adult biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. His out-of-print work, The Duke of Duval, a political biography, has commanded prices as high as $3,000 each on Amazon.co
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