Archives
Dead in the Morning by Margaret Yorke
Margaret Yorke (1924-2012) was born Margaret Beda Larminie Nicholson in Surrey, lived in Dublin for many years and moved back to England. She was a ferocious champion of libraries, for which she won the CWA Golden Handcuffs award, given in recognition of the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Black Stage by Anthony Gilbert
The Black Stage by Anthony Gilbert (Collins, 1945) is the 16th book about the redoubtable solicitor turned detective Arthur Crook. Published as Murder Cheats the Bride in the U.S., it is set immediately after the end of World War II with all of the characters...
A Clowder of Cat Mysteries
Originally published in Mystery Readers Journal, Volume 39, Number 4, Animals in Mysteries II, Winter 2023. That cats and mysteries go together like peanut butter and jelly or shoes and socks is evident by the number of mysteries written about cats and the number...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Case of the Missing Sandals by Nancy Barr Mavity
Nancy Barr Mavity (1890-1959) was a U.S. journalist, author, and critic. Born Nann Clark Barr in Illinois, she was a reporter, feature writer, and book reviewer for the Oakland Tribune for more than 20 years. She also wrote about her solo trips to Japan,...
The Corpse Now Arriving by Margaret Hinxman
Margaret Hinxman (1924-2018) was a preeminent UK film critic who turned to writing crime fiction after a wildly successful journalistic career. Her obituary in The Guardian describes her cinematic work in detail:...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox
Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was a British cleric and author. He was the son of the Bishop of Manchester. His brother Evoe was editor of Punch magazine and his sister Winifred Francis Knox Peck wrote in a range of genres, including two mysteries which have...
Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard
Since I began looking at overlooked or forgotten authors, I have found one writer after another whose work was popular during his or her lifetime and then at death it promptly vanished from discussions about favorite books and must-reads. I fear that Robert Barnard...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Dark Angel by James Ronald
James Jack Ronald (1905-1972) was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, mystery stories, and dramatic novels. Raised in Glasgow, Ronald moved to Chicago at seventeen where he worked in a variety of jobs and then returned to the UK to pursue a writing career. His early...
The Big Killing by Annette Meyers
Annette Meyers was assistant to Broadway producer-director Harold Prince for sixteen years, and then she was an executive search and management consultant on Wall Street for as long. With her husband Martin Meyers she wrote a series of historical mysteries about...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: There’s Death in the Churchyard by William Gore
Godfrey Jervis “Jan” (1882-1944) and Cora Josephine Turner (1879-1950) Gordon were artists and authors, painting in Paris before World War I and then traveling to Serbia to work with aid organizations there when war was declared. Jan was appointed a Lieutenant in...
