John G. Brandon

John Gordon Brandon (1879-1941) was an Australian-born writer who was initially a professional heavyweight boxer.

He moved to England after the First World War and his first published novel was 'The Big Hunt' (1923). He wrote more than 120 novels, and numerous short stories which were published in 'The Thriller'. After writing another six novels in the 1920s, his most productive decade was the 1930s when he wrote 78 novels. Published posthumously, 'Death Skulks in Soho' (1959) would appear to be his final novel.

He wrote instalments in the long-running Sexton Blake series and his principal characters were Sexton Blake, Patrick Aloysius McCarthy and Arthur Stukeley Pennington.

His son was the writer Gordon Brandon.

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Michael Gilbert

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Born in Lincolnshire in 1912, Michael Francis Gilbert was educated in Sussex before entering the University of London where he gained an LLB with honours in 1937. Gilbert was a founding member of the British Crime Writers Association, and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America - an achievement many thought long overdue. He won the Life Achievement Anthony Award at the 1990 Boucheron in London, and in 1980 he was knighted as a Commander in the Order of the British Empire. Gilbert made his debut in 1947 with Close Quarters, and since then has become recognized as one of our most versatile British mystery writers.

He was the fat
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Lois Austen-Leigh

Lois Emma Austen-Leigh, the granddaughter of Jane Austen’s nephew and thus the great-great niece of Jane herself, was born and brought up in Winterbourne, Gloucester, on 10 July 1883. Her father was the Rector in the town. They later moved to Wargrave in Berkshire. While there Lois kept a diary and she had one unusual pastime in that she rode a motor-cycle wherever she went.
During the First World War, 1916-1918, she worked as a gardener for the Red Cross in Reading, while her sister, Honor, was a nurse in Malta and France. After the War, she became a companion to her widowed aunt. Then, after her aunt’s death in 1926, she had a house, Cob House built at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast for herself and her sister. Possibly this was financed a
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Jack London

John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal rights, workers’ rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.

His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and Wh
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Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother, who was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Essex by the Wiggins family, who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict Protestant sect who banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. After he left them, he changed his name to his birth mother's maiden name, Cornwell.

Cornwell was sent away to Monkton Combe School, attended the University of London, and after graduating, worked as a teacher. He attempted to enlist in the British armed services at least three times but was rejected on the grounds of myopia.

He then joined BBC's Nationwide and was promoted to become head of current affairs at BBC Nort
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Martin Edwards

Martin Edwards has been described by Richard Osman as ‘a true master of British crime writing.’ He has published twenty-three novels, which include the eight Lake District Mysteries, one of which was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year and four books featuring Rachel Savernake, including the Dagger-nominated Gallows Court and Blackstone Fell, while Gallows Court and Sepulchre Street were shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best crime novel of the year. He is also the author of two multi-award-winning histories of crime fiction, The Life of Crime and The Golden Age of Murder. He has received three Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association and two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and has also b
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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.

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
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Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth--born Dora Amy Elles--was a British crime fiction writer.

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
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Michael Gilbert

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Born in Lincolnshire in 1912, Michael Francis Gilbert was educated in Sussex before entering the University of London where he gained an LLB with honours in 1937. Gilbert was a founding member of the British Crime Writers Association, and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America - an achievement many thought long overdue. He won the Life Achievement Anthony Award at the 1990 Boucheron in London, and in 1980 he was knighted as a Commander in the Order of the British Empire. Gilbert made his debut in 1947 with Close Quarters, and since then has become recognized as one of our most versatile British mystery writers.

He was the fat
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Freeman Wills Crofts

Born in Dublin of English stock, Freeman Wills Crofts was educated at Methodist and Campbell Colleges in Belfast and at age 17 he became a civil engineering pupil, apprenticed to his uncle, Berkeley D Wise who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway (BNCR).

In 1899 he became a fully fledged railway engineer before becoming a district engineer and then chief assistant engineer for the BNCR.

He married in 1912, Mary Bellas Canning, a bank manager's daughter. His writing career began when he was recovering from a serious illness and his efforts were rewarded when his first novel 'The Cask' was accepted for publication by a London publishing house. Within two decades the book had sold 100,000 copies. Thereafter he con
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George Bellairs

AKA Hilary Landon
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.
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Alan Melville

Alan Melville was an English broadcaster, writer, actor, raconteur, producer, playwright and wit.

There are multiple authors with this name.
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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.

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.
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J. Jefferson Farjeon

Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was always going to be a writer as, born in London, he was the son of Benjamin Leopold Farjeon who at the time was a well-known novelist whose other children were Eleanor Farjeon, who became a children's writer, and Herbert Farjeon, who became a playwright and who wrote the well-respected 'A Cricket Bag'.

The family were descended from Thomas Jefferson but it was his maternal grandfather, the American actor Joseph Jefferson, after whom Joseph was named. He was educated privately and at Peterborough Lodge and one of his early jobs, from 1910 to 1920, was doing some editorial work for the Amalgamated Press.

His first published work was in 1924 when Brentano's produced 'The Master Criminal', which is a tale of identity
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Fiona Sinclair

Fiona Sinclair was the pen name of Fiona Maud Peters (1919-1961), an actress and writer of five detective books published between 1960 and 1965.
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Carol Carnac

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.

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.
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Miles Burton

AKA John Rhode, Cecil Waye, Cecil J.C. Street, I.O., F.O.O..
Cecil John Charles Street, MC, OBE, (1884 - January 1965), known as CJC Street and John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British army. During the course of World War I, he became a propagandist for MI7, in which role he held the rank of Major. After the armistice, he alternated between Dublin and London during the Irish War of Independence as Information Officer for Dublin Castle, working closely with Lionel Curtis. He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels.

He produced two long series of novels; one under the name of John Rhode featuring the forensic scientist Dr Priestley, and another under the name of Miles Burton featurin
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Anthony Wynne

Anthony Wynne is a pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson, an English physician, who developed a specialism in cardiology after working as an assistant to Sir James Mackenzie, whose biography he subsequently wrote in 1926.

He was born in Glasgow, the son of William and Helen Wilson, (née Turner),

He was educated at Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University and became House Surgeon at Glasgow Western Infirmary. He was Medical Correspondent of The Times from 1914–1942.

He twice stood, unsuccessfully, for Parliament, as Liberal candidate for the Saffron Walden district of Essex in 1922 and 1923.

He wrote biographies and historical works under his own name and a single novel under the pseudonym Harry Colindale. Under Anthony Wynne, he created Eustace Hail
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Mavis Doriel Hay

Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979), who in early life lived in north London, was a novelist, who fleetingly lit up the golden age of British crime fiction. She attended St Hilda's, Oxford, around about the same time as Dorothy L Sayers was at Somerville.

She published only three detective novels, 'Murder Underground' (1934), 'Death on the Cherwell' (1935) and 'The Santa Klaus Murder' (1936). All three titles were well received on publication.

She was also an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject including 'Rural Industries of England and Wales' with co-author Helen Elizabeth Fitzrandolph.

In 1929, she married her co-author's brother Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, a member of a wealthy and influential family of loyalist
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Gil North

Gil North is the pseudonym of Geoffrey Horne, a British writer. He was born in Skipton Yorkshire and educated at Ermysted's Grammar School and Christ's College Cambridge. He married Betty Duthie in 1949. From 1938 to 1955 he was a civil servant in the African colonies. He has also written novels under his own name.
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John Bude

John Bude was a pseudonym used by Ernest Carpenter Elmore who was a British born writer.

He was born in 1901 and, as a boarder, he attended Mill Hill School, leaving in 1919 and moving on to Cheltenham where he attended a secretarial college and where he learned to type. After that he spent several years as games master at St Christopher School in Letchworth where he also led the school's dramatic activities.

This keen interest in the theatre led him to join the Lena Ashwell Players as stage manager and he took their productions around the country. He also acted in plays produced at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead, where he lived for a time. He honed his writing skills, whenever he had a moment to spare, in the various dressing rooms that
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Anne Meredith

Librarian's note: there is more than one author with this name.

Anne Meredith was a pseudonym of Lucy Malleson (1899-1973) who is best known as the author of the Arthur Crook series of detective novels published under the name of Anthony Gilbert . She was a highly esteemed writer of crime fiction and a member of the elite Detection Club, but the 'Anne Meredith' books were out of print for many years.
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Lois Austen-Leigh

Lois Emma Austen-Leigh, the granddaughter of Jane Austen’s nephew and thus the great-great niece of Jane herself, was born and brought up in Winterbourne, Gloucester, on 10 July 1883. Her father was the Rector in the town. They later moved to Wargrave in Berkshire. While there Lois kept a diary and she had one unusual pastime in that she rode a motor-cycle wherever she went.
During the First World War, 1916-1918, she worked as a gardener for the Red Cross in Reading, while her sister, Honor, was a nurse in Malta and France. After the War, she became a companion to her widowed aunt. Then, after her aunt’s death in 1926, she had a house, Cob House built at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast for herself and her sister. Possibly this was financed a
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Nap Lombard

Pen name of husband and wife writing team: Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson (m. 1936; div. 1949)
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