Mary Kelly
Mary Kelly was an English crime writer best known for the Inspector Brett Nightingale series. Writing in the 1950s and 1960s, Kelly was celebrated for the sense of refreshingly dark suspense in her mysteries. Her novel , published in 1961, won the Gold Dagger Award.
If you like author Mary Kelly here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (21)
-
Billie Houston
A Scottish actress and dancer; she toured music halls and revues with her sister Renée Houston as the "Houston Sisters". They became a leading variety act in the 1920s, sometimes performing as two children in over-sized furniture; Billie played the part of a boy.
Buy books on Amazon
Houston published one mystery novel in 1935. -
Nap Lombard
Pen name of husband and wife writing team: Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson (m. 1936; div. 1949)
Buy books on Amazon -
W.F. Harvey
William Fryer Harvey was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the macabre and horror genres. Among his best-known stories are "August Heat" and "The Beast with Five Fingers", described by horror historian Les Daniels as "minor masterpieces".
Buy books on Amazon
Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Yorkshire, he attended the Quaker schools at Bootham in Yorkshire and at Leighton Park in Reading before going on to Balliol College, Oxford. He took a degree in medicine at Leeds. Ill health dogged him, however, and he devoted himself to personal projects such as his first book of short stories, Midnight House (1910).
In World War I he initially joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit, but later served as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and received -
Anne Meredith
Librarian's note: there is more than one author with this name.
Buy books on Amazon
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. -
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.
Buy books on Amazon
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 -
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.
Buy books on Amazon
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. -
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.
Buy books on Amazon -
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'.
Buy books on Amazon
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 -
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.
Buy books on Amazon
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. -
Alan Melville
Alan Melville was an English broadcaster, writer, actor, raconteur, producer, playwright and wit.
Buy books on Amazon
There are multiple authors with this name. -
Lettice Cooper
Lettice Ulpha Cooper began to write stories when she was seven. She studied Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford graduating in 1918.
Buy books on Amazon
She returned home after Oxford to work for her family's engineering firm and wrote her first novel, 'The Lighted Room' in 1925. She spent a year as associate edtior at 'Time and Tide' and during the Second World War worked for the Ministry of Food's public relations division. Between 1947 and 1957 she was fiction reviewer for the Yorkshire Post. She was one of the founders of the Writers' Action Group along with Brigid Brophy, Maureen Duffy, Francis King and Michael Levy and received an OBE for her work in achieving Public Lending Rights. In 1987 at the age of ninety she was awarded the Freedom of the City of -
Anthony Gilbert
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Malleson an English crime writer. She also wrote non-genre fiction as Anne Meredith , under which name she also published one crime novel. She also wrote an autobiography under the Meredith name, Three-a-Penny (1940).
Buy books on Amazon
Her parents wanted her to be a schoolteacher but she was determined to become a writer. Her first mystery novel followed a visit to the theatre when she saw The Cat and the Canary then, Tragedy at Freyne, featuring Scott Egerton who later appeared in 10 novels, was published in 1927.
She adopted the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert to publish detective novels which achieved great success and made her a name in British detective literature, although many of her readers had always believed -
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).
Buy books on Amazon
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 -
Anthony Berkeley
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley Cox, and A. Monmouth Platts. One of the founders of The Detection Club
Buy books on Amazon
Cox was born in Watford and was educated at Sherborne School and University College London.
He served in the Army in World War I and thereafter worked as a journalist, contributing a series of humourous sketches to the magazine 'Punch'. These were later published collectively (1925) under the Anthony Berkeley pseudonym as 'Jugged Journalism' and the book was followed by a series of minor comic novels such as 'Brenda Entertains' (1925), 'The Family Witch' (1925) and 'The Professor on Paws' (1926).
It was also in 1925 when he published, anonymously to b -
John Ferguson
John Ferguson (1871-1952) was a Scottish clergyman, playwright, and mystery writer.
Buy books on Amazon
John Ferguson was born at Callander, Perthshire, but has made his home in many sharply contrasted places, from the misty isle of Skye to the sunlit island of Guernsey. And though now a resident in the New Forest near Lymington he lived for six years in the grim Dunimarle Castle in Fife, where Macduff's wife and child were murdered by Macbeth. As a dramatist Mr Ferguson is probably best known for his now famous play Campbell of Kilmohr, which at its first Royalty Theatre production was hailed by the dramatic critic of the Glasgow Herald as 'a new and significant type of Scottish drama'. Of John Ferguson's work one critic has said, 'As no two of his stories ar -
Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons is primarily remembered as a master of the art of crime writing. However, in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and he held a distinguished reputation in each field.
Buy books on Amazon
His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's -
Christianna Brand
Christianna Brand (December 17, 1907 - March 11, 1988) was a crime writer and children's author. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Roland, and China Thomson.
Buy books on Amazon
She was born Mary Christianna Milne in 1907 in Malaya and spent her early years in India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess.
Her first novel, Death in High Heels, was written while Brand was working as a salesgirl. In 1941, one of her best-loved characters, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, made his debut in the book Heads You Lose. The character would go on to appear in seven of her novels. Green for Danger is Brand’s most famous novel. The whodunit, set in a World War 2 hos -
Ethel Lina White
Ethel Lina White was a British crime writer, best known for her novel The Wheel Spins (1936), on which the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes (1938), was based, and Some Must Watch (1933), on which the film The Spiral Staircase (1946) was based.
Buy books on Amazon
Born in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1876, White started writing as a child, contributing essays and poems to children's papers. Later she began to write short stories, but it was some years before she wrote books.
She left employment in a government job working for the Ministry of Pensions in order to pursue writing. Her writing was to make her one of the best known crime writers in Britain and the USA during the 1930s and '40s.
Her first three works, published between 1927 and 1930, w -
John Dickson Carr
AKA Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.
Buy books on Amazon
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). -
Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons is primarily remembered as a master of the art of crime writing. However, in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and he held a distinguished reputation in each field.
Buy books on Amazon
His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's -
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.
Buy books on Amazon
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