9/13/1916 Roald Dahl arrives

September 13, 1913.  Ask any fan of Alfred hItchcock's TV show about their favorite episodes and they are very likely to recall "Lamb to the Slaughter," based on a short story by Roald Dahl. Another Dahl/Hitchcock  favorite was "The Man From the South," starring Peter Lorre as a gambler with a strnage obsession.

Today Dahl is best remembered for his children's books (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, etc. ) but he was a master of the suspenseful, sardonic short story.

9/11/1862 O. Henry is sweet

September 11, 1862.  William Sydney Porter was born on this date in Greensboro, North Carolina. He spent five years in prison for embezzling $856 from the bank where he worked.

But he is remembered today as one of America's greatest short story artists, under the name O. Henry. His "Gift of the Magi" will apparently live forever.  But in our field he is revered for creating the legendary safe cracker Jimmy Valentine, who only appeared in  one story, "A Retrieved Reformation," as well as the much-copied "Ransom of Red Chief."

"The Caballero's Way," featured the Cisco Kid, but he was anything but the brave Mexican hero of TV and the movies.  Instead this Cisco was a vicious American outlaw.

Oh, and Henry coined the phrase "banana republic," when he was in Honduras, hiding out from the bank charges.  Quite a full life.

9/9/1903 Phyllis A. Whitney arrives

September 9, 1903.  Phyllis A. Whitney was born on this date in Yokohama, Japan, of all places.  Not that there's anything wrong with Yokohama, but Whitney is thought of as an American author, which indeed she  was.  Her family spent her first few years in Asia.

Whitney was often described as an author of gothic novels, although she preferred the term romantic suspense.  Call it what you will, she was good at it.  Among her seventy novels were two Edgar winners for Best Juvenile Mysteries.  The MWA recognized her as a Grand Master in 1988.  She died at the ripe old age of 104. 

9/4/1900 Cyril Hare comes up

September 4, 1900.  Alfred Gordon Clark was born on this date in Surrey, England.  He became a barrister and later a judge, but he interests us because, under the name Cyril Hare, he wrote some great mystery novels.  His most important character was Francis Pettigrew, also a barrister.

8/25/1911 Ed Lacy is born

August 25, 1911.  Ed Lacy was born on this day.  He wrote about fifty novels, mostly mysteries.  He won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel for Room to Swing which introduced an African-American private eye named Toussaint "Touie" Marcus Moore.

8/21/1916 Jackson Gillis is born

August 21, 1916.  One of the great writers of TV crime was born on this date in Kalama, Washington.  In 1953 Jackson Gillis became the main writer for a syndicated cop show called I'm The Law, starring George Raft.  In the years that followed he wrote for Perry Mason, Mannix, Mod Squad, Cannon, Ironside, The Man From Uncle, Hawaii Five-O, and tons of other series.


He was also a key figure in Columbo, with a hand in at least fifteen episodes.  His first script there was "Framed For Murder" with Ross Martin as the guest murderer, and some of us fondly remember that one for the cleverest clue and the most audacious "reveal" in the whole series.  He was nominated for an Emmy for it, losing to his bosses, the show's creators Levinson and Link.

His last script was for Lois and Clark, based on a story he wrote for The Adventures of Superman forty-years earlier.

Most of this information comes from an excellent article by Michael Mallory in a recent issue (#149) of Mystery Scene magazine.

8/16/1902 The mother of the historical romance is born

August 16, 1902.  You might say Georgette Heyer was born a century late.  Her most popular books were romances, set in the Regency period (early nineteenth century).

Naturally we are more concerned with her less popular books, the thrillers, the creation of which  she compared to solving crossword puzzles.  Sometimes the mechanical nature showed a little too much, as in the novel in which all the main characters names are alphabetical according to the order in which appear.

8/9/1910 Robert Van Gulik is born

August 9, 1910.  Robert Van Gulik was born in the Zutphen in the Netherlands on this day.  While he was a diplomat, a musician, and man of other accomplishments, he is best remembered for his Judge Dee novels, inspired by an eighteenth century Chinese novel.  The real Judge Di lived in the seventh century, but the original novel (which Van Gulik translated) bumped him up to the Ming Dynasty, approximately a thousand years later.  

8/5/1926 Yahoo for Wahloo

August 5, 1926.  Decades before some girl got a dragon tattoo, Scandanavian crime fiction consisted mostly of an excellent set of novels by Per Wahlöö (who was born on this day) and Maj Sjöwall.  These Swedes were very methodical and  blunt about their intentions: they were going to write ten police procedurals, each thirty chapters long. They wrote alternating chapters. The books were going to get more political - frankly Marxist - as the series went on.  And that is exactly what happened.

They called the entire series The Story of a Crime, which referred to Swedish society, not a mere murder or two.  The hero was the melancholy cop, Martin Beck. The Laughing Policeman won the Edgar for Best Mystery Novel.  It was made into a movie starring Walter Matthau.  Among the other actors who starred in movies based on their books is Derek Jacobi.

8/3/1920 P. D. James is born

August 3, 1920. P.D. James was born on this date in Oxford, England.  When her husband came back from World War II with mental issues she started working to support the family.  She started to write novels in the 1950s.  Her novels about police detective Adam Dalgliesh led her to fame and fortune.

Among her honors were the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a life peerage from that whole British government thing.

7/29/1909 Chester Himes is born

July 29, 1909.  Chester Himes, arguably the first great African-American mystery writer, was born this day in Jefferson City, Missouri.  He started writing while in prison for armed robbery.  He is best remembered for the Harlem Detectives novels he wrote, featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, two Harlem police detectives.  Three of them were made into movies, starting with Cotton Comes To Harlem in 1970.

The novelist Ishmael Reed wrote that Himes "taught me the difference between a black detective and Sherlock Holmes."

7/26/1866 George Barr McCutcheon is born

July 26, 1866.  On this date George Barr McCutcheon was born.  He is best remembered for his novel Brewster's Millions, about a man who, in order to inherit seven million dollars, has to first spend one million.  It has been made into a movie a dozen times.

His most famous contribution to crime fiction is Anderson Crow, a midwestern lawman who appears in some comic novels.

7/24/1915 Baby blue for the onesie

July 24, 1916.  This was the birthday of one of the most popular and prolific of American mystery writers, John D. MacDonald.  He is best remembered as the creator of "salvage expert" Travis McGee, but his other work included the novel The Executioners, filmed twice as Cape Fear.

The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1972. Or should we say they recognized him as one?

7/20/1924 Who is Thomas Berger?

July 20, 1924.  Thomas Berger was born on this day in Cincinnati.  He was the author of many eccentric novels, most of which explored a different genre (although he said his subject was always the language, not the plot).

His western was Little Big Man, source for the Dustin Hoffman movie.  Several other movies based on his work followed.

Berger's Regiment of Women appears to be a science fiction attack on the feminist movement, but deeper down there is an exploration of sexist language.  If a successful man has a young mistress, what does a successful woman have?  A master?

In 1977 Who is Teddy Villanova? arrived.  It begins with private eye Russel Wren being beaten up because of the titular Villanova, whom he has never heard of.  Then a bunch of corpses start showing up everywhere.  Well, technically, the same corpse keeps showing up.  And the cops, all named for Protestant theologians, are filming a TV series called The Reformers.

A decade later Russel Wren returns for a case that takes him to a strange and distant land.  Nowhere is Berger's version of a utopian novel.  One memorable scene involves a coroner explaining that in this land the cause of death is always listed as heart failure.  Hey, shoot someone or cut off their head and their heart will stop. 

7/12/1933 Westlake busts in

July 12, 1933.  On this date comic mayhem gained one of its greatest advocates. Donald E. Westlake was born.  He may be the only author bestknown for parodying himself.  His books about the talented but luckless burglar John Dortmunder seem like a funhouse mirror held to the deadly serious books he wrote, under the name Richard Stark about the ruthless thief Parker.

Many of his books were made into movies, and he was nominated for an Oscar for his script of The Grifters, based on a Jim Thompson novel.  The MWA gave him several Edgars and named him a grandmaster.

I once had the honor of sitting with him at a luncheon.  All I had to  do was sneak into the dining room and rearrange the table cards.  Dortmunder and Parker would have been proud.

7/9/1905 Lionel White is born

July 9, 1905. Lionel White was born on this date in New York City.  He wrote many crime novels, and a lot of them were adapted into films.  For example, Stanley Kubrick turned Clean Break into his movie The Killing. 

But surely the weirdest adaptation of one of his books was what happened to The Snatch, a novel about kidnapping a child.  A gang of French criminals read the book and used it as the blueprint for a real crime.  It went beautifully until, as Donald E. Westlake out it, "They ran out of book."  Bragging about their accomplishments and spending money wildly, they were soon picked up.  They did not offer White any of the ransom money, alas.

7/6/1899 America's Agatha Christie is born

July 6, 1899.  Mignon G. Eberhart was born on this day in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Her career extended through seven decades.  Known as "America's Agatha Christie" she wrote almost sixty novels.  Most of her books are considered romantic suspense, and she was a pioneer in the use of female main characters.  The Mystery Writers of America declared her a Grand Master in 1971.

7/1/1892 The Baby not in the icebox

July 1, 1892.  Happy birthday to James M. Cain, one of the noiriest of the noir writers. He was greatly admired for The Postman  Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, among other grim stories of bad things happening to bad people.

Many of them were made into movies.  Supposedly when a friend tried to sympathize with him about what Hollywood had done to his books, Cain replied "They haven't done anything with them  They're right over there on the shelf."

6/29/1908 Bruno Fischer is born

June 29, 1908.  Bruno Fischer was born on this day in Germany.  His family moved to the U.S. in 1913.  He wrote paperbacks and stories for the pulp magazines, often in the gloomy noir style of Cornell Woolrich.

6/19/1863 Max Pembleton arrives

June 19, 1863.  Max Pemberton was born on this day in London.  He grew up to write mostly adventure novels, most famously The Iron Pirate about a modern day vessel terrifying the seas. 

You can read "The Ripening Rubies," which some consider his best crime story, here.