Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Shadowy Third by Marco Page
Marco Page was the pseudonym of Harry Kurnitz (1909-1968), an American playwright, producer, screenwriter, and book and music reviewer. He was mostly known for his movie scripts, writing over-the-top adventures for Errol Flynn and comedies for Danny Kaye, among...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Affair of the Dead Stranger by Clifford Knight
Among the dozens of books in my recently acquired collection of Detective Book Club anthologies are a few stories by Clifford Knight, about whom little has been written. Knight (1886-1963) was an American author who contributed to the pulp magazines and who...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: They Rang Up the Police by Joanna Cannan
Joanna Maxwell Cannan (1896 – 1961) was an English writer of children’s pony books and adult detective novels. She belonged to a family of prolific writers and all four of her children became writers. Her first mystery was published in 1939; it featured...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Red Scar by Anthony Wynne
Anthony Wynne was the pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson (1882-1963), an English physician and author. Wilson was Medical Correspondent for the Times from 1914 to 1942. He is the creator of amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey, an early psychologist and consultant to...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Part for a Poisoner by E. C. R. Lorac
Perhaps of all the obscure authors brought back into the public’s eye by the British Library in its Crime Classics series, I enjoy Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958) the most. Her 70 plus mysteries, originally published between 1931 and 1959, are immensely readable,...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Grave Error by Stephen Greenleaf
I continue to be surprised by the number of dedicated mystery readers who do not know the John Marshall Tanner PI novels published by Stephen Greenleaf between 1979 and 2000. I have never understood how they are so little known considering the consistently strong...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Five Bullets by Lee Thayer
Emma Redington Lee Thayer (1874-1973) was an American author who published 61 mystery novels under the name Lee Thayer, beginning with The Mystery of the Thirteenth Floor (1919) and ending with Dusty Death (1966). All but one feature the private investigator Peter...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Lift Up the Lid by Anthony Gilbert
Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973) was a British author most well known for her creation of Arthur G. Crook, an entertaining beer-drinking lawyer whose ethics do not bear scrutiny. Crook had some 50 adventures published under the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert between...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death in High Heels by Christianna Brand
Christianna Brand was the pseudonym of Mary Christianna Lewis (1907-1985), who also wrote as China Thomson, Annabel Jones, Mary Roland, and Mary Ann Ashe. She wrote mysteries, fantasy, short stories, and children’s books. The 2005 film Nanny McPhee is based on the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Hard Liver by Anthony Weymouth
About a year ago I talked about one of the last Inspector Treadgold mysteries by Anthony Weymouth, the pseudonym of Ivo Geikie Cobb (1887-1953), a London physician and author. Cobb wrote a number of books on clinical topics and seven detective novels about...
