Helen Reilly
Helen Reilly was an American novelist. She was born Helen Kieran and grew up in New York City in a literary family. Her brother, James Kieran, also wrote a mystery, and two of her daughters, Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, are mystery writers.
Reilly's early books were police procedurals based on her research into the New York Homicide squad. Her most popular character is Inspector Christopher McKee. Reilly also used the pseudonym Kieran Abbey.
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Hugh Pentecost
Hugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips. Born in Massachusetts, Philips came of age during the golden age of pulp magazines, and spent the 1930s writing suspense fiction and sports stories for a number of famous pulps. His first book was Hold 'Em Girls! The Intelligent Women's Guide to Men and Football (1936). In 1939, his crime story Cancelled in Red won the Red Badge prize, launching his career as a novelist. Philips went on to write nearly one hundred books over the next five decades.
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His best-known characters were Pierre Chambrun, a sleuthing hotel manager who first appeared in The Cannibal Who Overate (1962), and the one-legged investigative reporter Peter Styles, introduced in Laughter Trap (1964). Although he spe -
Ellis Peters
A pseudonym used by Edith Pargeter.
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Edith Mary Pargeter, OBE, BEM was a prolific author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of Czech classics; she is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern. Born in the village of Horsehay (Shropshire, England), she had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books (both fictional and non-fictional) were set in Wales and its borderlands.
During World War II, she worked in an administrative role in the Women's Royal Naval Service, and received the British Empire Medal - BEM.
Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms; it was under the name Ellis Peters that she wrote the highly popular seri -
Amy Tan
Amy Tan (Chinese: 譚恩美; pinyin: Tán Ēnměi; born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose novels include The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish From Drowing, and The Valley of Amazement. She is the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins. Her two children’s books are The Chinese Siamese Cat and The Moon Lady. She is also the co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of The Joy Luck, the librettist of the opera The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and the creative consultant to the PBS animated series Sagwa the Chinese Chinese Cat.
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Tan is an instructor with MasterClass on writing, memory and imagination. She is featured in the American Masters document -
John Dickson Carr
AKA Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.
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John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1906. It Walks by Night, his first published detective novel, featuring the Frenchman Henri Bencolin, was published in 1930. Apart from Dr Fell, whose first appearance was in Hag's Nook in 1933, Carr's other series detectives (published under the nom de plume of Carter Dickson) were the barrister Sir Henry Merrivale, who debuted in The Plague Court Murders (1934). -
Peter Lovesey
Peter Harmer Lovesey, also known by his pen name Peter Lear, was a British writer of historical and contemporary detective novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath. He was also one of the world's leading track and field statisticians.
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Ellery Queen
aka Barnaby Ross.
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(Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee)
"Ellery Queen" was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age "fair play" mystery.
Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen's first appearance came in 1928 when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector f -
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975) was an American crime writer, best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair).
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The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century. -
Gwen Bristow
Gwen Bristow (September 16, 1903 - August 17, 1980) was an American author and journalist. She studied at Columbia University and afterwards wrote for a number of literary magazines and journals. Eventually she moved to New Orleans, and worked at the Times-Picayune. She became interested in longer forms of writing—novels and short stories—through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, and published her first novel in 1929.
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Bristow reached the pinnacle of her career with the western romance Jubilee Trail, which became a bestseller in 1950, and was adapted to a moderately successful film in 1954. -
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 -
Joe R. Lansdale
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His nov
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Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mysteries of the well-known American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart include The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Door (1930).
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People often called this prolific author the American version of Agatha Christie. She is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it," though the exact phrase doesn't appear in her works, and she invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing.
Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues, and special articles. Many of her books and plays were adapted for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). Critics most appreciated her murder mysteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ro... -
Hugh Pentecost
Hugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips. Born in Massachusetts, Philips came of age during the golden age of pulp magazines, and spent the 1930s writing suspense fiction and sports stories for a number of famous pulps. His first book was Hold 'Em Girls! The Intelligent Women's Guide to Men and Football (1936). In 1939, his crime story Cancelled in Red won the Red Badge prize, launching his career as a novelist. Philips went on to write nearly one hundred books over the next five decades.
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His best-known characters were Pierre Chambrun, a sleuthing hotel manager who first appeared in The Cannibal Who Overate (1962), and the one-legged investigative reporter Peter Styles, introduced in Laughter Trap (1964). Although he spe -
Stuart Palmer
Pseudonyms Theodore Orchards, Jay Stewart
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Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs—including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting—before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Holl -
Faith Sullivan
Faith Sullivan was born and raised in southern Minnesota. Married to drama critic Dan Sullivan, she lived twenty-some years in New York and Los Angeles, returning to Minnesota often to keep her roots planted in the prairie. She is the author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse (2015), Gardenias (2005), What a Woman Must Do (2002), The Empress of One (1997), The Cape Ann (1988), Mrs. Demming and The Mythical Beast (1986), Watchdog (1982) and Repent, Lanny Merkel (1981). A “demon gardener, flea marketer, and feeder of birds,” Sullivan lives in Minneapolis with her husband. They have three grown children.
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She is the winner of the Midwest Book Award, the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the Ben Franklin Prize -
Joyce Porter
Joyce Porter was born in Marple, Cheshire, and educated at King's College, London. In 1949 she joined the Women's Royal Air Force, and, on the strength of an intensive course in Russian, qualified for confidential work in intelligence. When she left the service in 1963 she had completed three detective novels.
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Porter is best known for her series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Wilfred Dover. Dover One appeared in 1964, followed by nine more in a highly successful series. Porter also created the reluctant spy Eddie Brown, and the "Hon-Con", the aristocratic gentlewoman-detective Constance Ethel Morrison Burke. -
C. Daly King
Charles Daly King (1895-1963) was an American psychologist. He was educated at Newark Academy, Yale and Columbia University. After Army service in WW1 he trained in psychology and wrote several textbooks. In the 1930s he wrote seven detective novels while working in psychology. His detective, Michael Lord, is attached to the New York police department. Lord's cases are recounted by a Watson figure, Dr L Rees Pons. King coined the word 'Obelists' to describe suspects, and used it in three of his titles. Another series character, Trevis Tarrant, appears in a book of short stories. After Bermuda Burial (1940) King wrote no further fiction.
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Helen McCloy
Helen McCloy, born as Helen Worrell Clarkson McCloy (she also published as Helen Clarkson), was an American mystery writer, whose series character Dr. Basil Willing debuted in Dance of Death (1938). Willing believes that "every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints, and he can't wear gloves to hide them." He appeared in 13 of McCloy's novels and in several of her short stories. McCloy often used the theme of doppelganger, but in the end of the story she showed a psychological or realistic explanation for the seemingly supernatural events.
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Rufus King
Rufus King was an American author of Whodunit crime novels. He created two series of detective stories: the first one with Reginald De Puyster, a sophisticated detective similar to Philo Vance, and the second one with his more famous character, the Lieutenant Valcour.
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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name. -
Margot Bennett
Scottish author Margot Bennett was born in 1912 and worked first first as a copywriter in the UK and Australia and then as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War before turning to writing. Her output in crime fiction was relatively small, yet successful: The Man Who Didn't Fly was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was runner-up to Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison for Best Novel at the Edgars in 1956, and she won the Gold Dagger two years later in 1958 with Someone from the Past. She was also chosen to contribute a short story to the second CWA anthology, Choice Of Weapons, edited by Michael Gilbert.
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Frances Noyes Hart
Frances Newbold Noyes Hart (August 1890 – October 25, 1943) was an American writer whose short stories were published in Scribner's magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies' Home Journal.
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Q. Patrick
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (19 March 1912 – 26 July 1987), Richard Wilson Webb (August 1901 – December 1966), Martha Mott Kelly (30 April 1906–2005) and Mary Louise White Aswell (3 June 1902 – 24 December 1984) wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
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Helen Simonson
Helen Simonson was born in England and spent her teenage years in a small village in East Sussex. A dual UK/USA citizen, she is a graduate of the London School of Economics with an MFA from Stony Brook Southampton. Helen is married with two sons and lives in Brooklyn NY. Her debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, was a NY Times bestseller, sold over a million copies and was published in twenty one countries. Her second novel The Summer before The War was also a NY Times and international bestseller. Her newest novel is The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club.
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Baynard H. Kendrick
Also wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hayward
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Kendrick was an American lawyer and executive who became a full-time writer in 1932. His first mystery novel, Blood on Lake Louisa was published in 1934.
In 1914 Kendrick was the first American to enlist in the Canadian Army, one hour after that country declared war.
He married Edythe Stevens in 1919 and Jean Morris in 1971, and became an executive and manager of hotels and publishing companies. Kendrick was the organizer and only sighted member of the Blinded Veterans Association.
He was also a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America and held membership #1. In the 1960s he retired to Florida. -
Ronald Knox
Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, author of detective stories, as well as a writer and a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio.
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Knox had attended Eton College and won several scholarships at Balliol College, Oxford. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912 and was appointed chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, but he left in 1917 upon his conversion to Catholicism. In 1918 he was ordained a Catholic priest. Knox wrote many books of essays and novels. Directed by his religious superiors, he re-translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English, using Hebrew and Greek sources, beginning in 1936.
He died on 24 August 1957 and his body was brought to Westminster Cathedral. Bishop Craven celebrated the requiem ma -
Max Murray
Maxwell Alexander Murray. 1901-1956. Born in Australia; newspaper reporter in that country, the U.S., and England; scriptwriter and editor for BBC during WWII; married to author Maysie Greig.
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