Two authors who have passed away not too long ago seem to have escaped notice in the world of mystery fiction, but not to the larger universe we also live in. Both have only one book included in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, who recently came across the deaths of each.

   First is Pat Maloney, Sr., whose entry in CFIV previously looked like this:

      MALONEY, PAT, Sr. (c1926- ); Texas trial lawyer from San Antonio.

         * Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor (Presidio, 1998, hc) [Texas]

   Saying that Mr. Maloney was a trial lawyer is perhaps the understatement of the year, so far. Extracted from his obituary which appeared in the Washington Post for September 21, 2005, is the following:

   To complete his updated entry in CFIV, Mr. Maloney was born August 9, 1924.

   Another author whose death has been recently noted is Arthur Maimane. His entry in CFIV consists of just one title as well:

      MAIMANE, ARTHUR (1932- ); A black South African.

         * Victims (Allison, 1976, hc) [South Africa; 1950s]

   One title, but the overall scheme of things, an important one. Born October 12, 1932, his full name was John Arthur Mogale Maimane. He died in London, June 28, 2005. Taken from his obituary in The Independent (London) is a short description of his early working career:

   His book Victims, winner of the English Academy of South Africa’s Pringle Award for Creative Writing in 1978, was banned in South Africa at the time of its publication but finally appeared there under the title Hate No More, Kwela Books, 2000.

   An online description of the book says of it:

   Another, more detailed obituary appears online here, this one from The Guardian.

   In Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, there is presently no biographical information of any kind for Leonard Lupton, an author known perhaps only to collectors of Graphic paperbacks in the 1950s. I’m referring here to books produced by the Graphic Publishing Company of 240 W. 40th Street, New York, NY, but admittedly the covers could often be graphic, too.

   But more about the books (and their covers) in a minute. A couple of recent emails between Al Hubin and Victor Berch have done much to remove some of the anonymity in which Mr. Lupton has been residing all these years.

   Al wrote to Victor first, saying,

   Victor’s reply, in part:

   There being a complete consensus at this time that the Leonard Lupton found in Social Security records being Leonard Lupton, the author, it’s about time for a list of the books he authored. Adapted from, and updating his entry in CFIV are the following:

LUPTON, (WILLIAM) LEONARD (1907-2000); see pseudonyms Mary Lupton & Chester Warwick

   * Murder Without Tears (Graphic 149, 1957, pb) [New York] Hard-boiled mystery. “Lovely Anne Cramer made a cozy alibi for Jason Broome — and Craddock made his favorite corpse. But when Anne swore to the police she had spent that whole kiss-and-kill night with him, was she really saving Jason from the hot seat — or luring him into murder without tears!”

   * -The Night of the Owl (Lenox Hill, 1971, hc) Gothic Romance. Mrs. Moreland’s lively daughter could not keep from wishing to go to the pseudo-Swiss chalet known as Alpenstock, reputed to be haunted…

LUPTON, MARY; pseudonym of Leonard Lupton; other pseudonym Chester Warwick

* –Dangerous Kisses (Avalon, 1983, hc)

* –The Doomsday Ghost (Avalon, 1984, hc) [Alabama] [A tutor comes to an Alabama estate nicknamed Doomsday Plantation and faces both anger and love.]

* –Fantasy at Midnight (Avalon, 1982, hc)

* –Fear to Love (Avalon, 1983, hc) [A woman takes time off from her journalism job to visit her ill grandfather and finds herself falling for a potentially dangerous man.]

* Ghost of the Rock (Avalon, 1986, hc)

* House of Vengeance (Avalon, 1984, hc) [A woman inherits a reportedly haunted house and, when she arrives, she can’t understand why someone would want to harm her.]

* –Night Glow (Avalon, 1982, hc)

* Perilous Kisses [Avalon, 1986] [Included in the online Addenda #9 to the Revised CFIV.]

      [NON-MYSTERY]

* Summer Camp Nurse [Avalon, 1985] Nurse romance novel.

WARWICK, CHESTER; pseudonym of Leonard Lupton; other pseudonym Mary Lupton

Other fiction as LEONARD LUPTON:

   The latter two books, while not seen, are almost assuredly westerns.

   One last search on the Internet led to the following discovery. From The FictionMags Index is the following (partial) list of pulp magazine stories written by Leonard Lupton, almost all of them tales of valor on the sports fields and arenas.

   Mr. Lupton, if the author were the same man, and we are 99% sure that he is, would have been 20 when he started writing, and 35 when the last story appeared. That was in 1942, just in time to serve (as a guess) in World War II.

LUPTON, LEONARD

   A short autobiography of Mr. Craig can be found at www.philiprcraig.com. It will be for his books that he will be remembered by his readers, however. And from his books it was easy to understand what kind of person the author was. In their own way, in some imprecise fashion, of course, they are also the core of his biography.

   Like clockwork, every year from 1989 to the present except one, another excursion to Martha’s Vineyard and another case for former Boston cop J. W. “Jeff” Jackson and his wife Zee (nee Madieras), whom he married early in the series.

   After falling in love with the island, Jackson settled down to a life of fishing and occasional private investigation, often bringing him and Zee into considerable personal danger.

   Here’s an excerpt taken from A Case of Vineyard Poison:

   Another excerpt, this one taken from Death on a Vineyard Beach:

   In this excerpt from A Deadly Vineyard Holiday, J. W. has just met a young girl on the beach:

   The Books. Adapted from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and from Mr. Craig’s own website:

* Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (n.) Doubleday 1969 [Sweden]
* A Beautiful Place to Die (n.) Scribner 1989 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (n.) Scribner 1991 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* The Double-Minded Men (n.) Scribner 1992 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Cliff Hanger (n.) Scribner 1993 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Off Season (n.) Scribner 1994 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* A Case of Vineyard Poison (n.) Simon 1995 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Death on a Vineyard Beach (n.) Scribner 1996 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (n.) Scribner 1997 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* A Shoot on Martha’s Vineyard (n.) Scribner 1998 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* A Fatal Vineyard Season (n.) Scribner 1999 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Vineyard Blues (n.) Scribner 2000 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Vineyard Shadows (n.) Scriber 2001 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Vineyard Enigma (n.) Scribner 2002 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* A Vineyard Killing (n.) Scribner 2003 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (n.) Scribner 2004 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Vineyard Prey (n.) Scribner 2005 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Death in Vineyard Sand (n.) Scribner 2006 [J. W. Jackson; Martha’s Vineyard]

* Death in Vineyard Waters (n.) Avon 2003; originally published as The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (Scribner, 1991).
* Vineyard Deceit (n.) Avon, 2004; originally published as The Double-Minded Men (Scribner, 1992)
* Vineyard Fear (n.) Avon, 2004; originally published as Cliff Hanger (Scribner, 1993)

… with WILLIAM G. TAPPLY

* First Light (n.) Scribner, 2001 [J. W. Jackson & Brady Coyne; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Second Sight (n.) Scribner 2005 [J. W. Jackson & Brady Coyne; Martha’s Vineyard]
* Third Strike (n.) Scribner 2007 [J. W. Jackson & Brady Coyne]

   Brady Coyne is a Boston attorney who has had numerous cases to solve on his own. Both the authors and their characters, as it turns out, are old fishing buddies, and it came as no surprise when readers found them respectively writing and solving murders together.

   Plus:

Delish: The J.W. Jackson Recipes, co-written with Shirley Prada Craig (Vineyard Stories, 2006)

[UPDATE] Later the same day. A lengthy personal tribute by Bill Tapply to his friend and collaborator, Philip R. Craig, is online here.

   A couple of months ago I reviewed a book by Marguerite Silverman entitled The Vet It Was That Died. I didn’t include any biographical information on the author because at the time, I couldn’t find any. Nor was there anything more about her in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, only the following list of the three books she wrote:

   
   For my overall opinion of the book, you can read the review. Here?s a quote, though, from somewhere early on:

   
   Keep this in mind, as this will be important later. I no longer remember the reason — and this was only yesterday, mind you — but I happened to Google the author’s name, and up came up several websites I hadn’t seen before. Marguerite Silverman is not a common name, but neither is it uncommon, which makes a big difference when trying to locate an author when all you have to work with is her or her name.

   But one or two of these websites mentioned Marguerite Silverman as being — a veterinarian! And yet another site where I found her name was in relation to pets and their well-being.

   I asked British librarian-sleuth John Herrington if I was onto something, and indeed, yes he agreed, sending me this paragraph about her, found here:

   
   For those of us who are acronym-disabled, Google helps out in this manner also:

      MRCVS = Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon
      ACIS = Associate of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries
      UFAW = Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

   Working backward from her age at the time she died, along with the fact that she passed away so late in the year, it means that Miss Silverman, who apparently never married, was born in 1914. Unfortunately the Somerset Local Studied Library had no obituary on record for her. Then in a later email, John reported that: “According to Freebmd, her birth was registered in Southampton in June 1914. (Entry is incorrect as transcriber has read the R for Ruth as an M — magnification of the entry shows it as a poor R.)”

   I’ve still read only the one book of the three that Marguerite Silverman wrote. Knowing that she was a veterinarian herself, and learning of her lifelong love of animals, puts the book into a perspective I hadn’t had before. It also puts tracking down her other two mysteries several notches higher on my scale of things to do. Both are rather scarce, unfortunately.

      —

[UPDATE] 05-07-07. Although neither John nor I realized it, Al Hubin already had the information on Miss Silverman’s birth and death dates. See his Addenda #9 for the Revised CFIV.

   Chester H. Opal was a one-shot author, at least as far as the world of crime and mystery fiction is concerned. The single entry for him in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin is:

LORRAINE, JOHN; pseudonym of Chester H. Opal
      * Men of Career (Crown, 1960, hc)

   According to what Al has learned, Mr. Opal was born February 9, 1918, and died on February 27, 2006. Neither date was known before. The subtitle of Men of Career is: A Novel About the Foreign Service, which makes the following Internet discovery come as no surprise:

   Deposited with Georgetown University’s Foreign Affairs Oral History Program is an interview with Chester H. Opal (USIA), or the United States Information Agency.

   Further investigation reveals that in his folder is a transcript of an interview he had with G. Lewis Schmidt, in which he discussed Poland (1946-49); Italy (1949-50); Planning Staff (1950-52); Vienna, Austria (1952-53); Mexico (1954-56); Naval War College (1956); Saigon, Vietnam (1957-60); Deputy Director of Television Service (1961-62); Schmidt Task Force on Europe (1962-63); Assistant Director for Europe (1963); Beirut, Lebanon (1964-66).

   Playwright Robert Lord, born in New Zealand on July 18, 1945, also has but one credit to his name in Crime Fiction IV, as follows:

LORD, ROBERT (Needham)
      * Country Cops (Broadway, 1988, pb) 2-act play.

   Based on information from Contemporary Authors, Mr. Lord lived in the US between the years 1974 to 1990, when he returned in New Zealand, where he died of cancer in January 1992.

   Further biographical information can easily be found on the Internet. A complete list of his plays can be found at http://www.playmarket.org.nz/, for example.

   Also learned from that website is that Mr Lord, “wrote numerous television programs as well as the screenplay for the New Zealand feature Pictures. At the time of his death, he was working on the screenplay The Big Ditch.”

   Described as a black comedy farce, Country Cops was first produced at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont. Synopsis:  “Set in a police station in small-town New Zealand. Jasper Sharp is sent from the city to solve a murder.”

   Recently brought to the attention of mystery readers was the hitherto unnoted death of crime fiction author Michael Kenyon. Born in Yorkshire England in 1935, he lived in the US off and on after his university days for many years before eventually becoming an American citizen in 1997. He died in Southampton NY in 2005.

   Mr. Kenyon has a long list of credits in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, most of them featuring in the starring role either Ireland’s Superintendent O’Malley or Inspector Henry Peckover of Scotland Yard. One book, The Elgar Variation (US title) seems to be somewhat of a transition point between the two series, with both characters sharing the top billing (see below).

KENYON, MICHAEL (1931-2005); occasional US pseudonym Daniel Forbes.

    * May You Die in Ireland (n.) Collins 1965; Morrow, 1965. Fawcett Crest R1211, pb, 1968. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]

   * The Whole Hog (n.) Collins 1967; Morrow 1967, as The Trouble with Series Three. [Illinois; Academia]
    * Out of Season (n.) Collins 1968 [Channel Islands]. No US publication.
   * The 100,000 Welcomes (n.) Collins 1970; Coward, 1970. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]
    * The Shooting of Dan McGrew (n.) Collins 1972; McKay, 1975. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]

   * A Sorry State (n.) Collins 1974; McKay, 1974. [Supt. O’Malley; Philippines]
    * Mr. Big (n.) Collins 1975; Coward, 1975, as by Daniel Forbes. [England]
    * The Rapist (n.) Collins 1977; Coward, 1977, as by Daniel Forbes. Dell 17294, pb, 1982. [Supt. O’Malley; Ireland]
    * Deep Pocket (n.) Collins 1978; Coward, 1978, as The Molehill File. [Insp. Henry Peckover; England]
    * Zigzag (n.) Collins 1981; Coward 1981, as The Elgar Variation. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Supt. O’Malley; England]
    * The God Squad Bod (n.) Collins 1982; Doubleday 1982, as The Man at the Wheel. Avon 70381, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; London]
    *A Free Range Wife (n.) Collins 1983; Doubleday, 1983. Avon 70382, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; France]
    *A Healthy Way to Die (n.) Hodder 1986; Doubleday, 1986. Avon 70380, pb, 1987. [Insp. Henry Peckover; England]
    * Peckover Holds the Baby (n.) Severn 1988; Doubleday, 1988. Avon 70636, pb, 1988. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Belize]
    * Kill the Butler! (n.) Macmillan 1991; St. Martin’s, 1993. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Long Island, NY]
    * Peckover Joins the Choir (n.) Macmillan 1992; St. Martin’s, 1994. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Belgium]
    * Peckover and the Bog Man (n.) Macmillan 1994; St. Martin’s, 1995. [Insp. Henry Peckover; Scotland]

   Compiled by using resources available on the Internet, the following collection of short synopses does not include all of the books above, but it does provide a fairly substantial glimpse into the kind of mystery fiction Mr. Kenyon wrote:

   May You Die in Ireland. The letter bearing the news that William Foley, easy-going math professor at a Midwestern university, had become the owner of a castle in Ireland was certainly cause for celebration. But the legacy that made him king of a castle also turned him into a human carrier pigeon, the unwitting bearer of a deadly secret, and a living time bomb.

   The Whole Hog aka The Trouble with Series Three. Arthur Appleyard experiments with pigs and their feeds.. one day he finds series three batch, including Marlon and Humphrey, have been given a magical ingredients of critical importance to the space race and the cold war!

   Out of Season. Mystery set in Jersey as a German man returns to the island where his father was once stationed, to be met by hostility and bizarre events.

   The Shooting of Dan McGrew. In this hilarious Irish crime story, O’Malley investigates the disappearance of two prospectors working a mine site together.

   The Rapist. Dungoole in County Cork begins to unravel when a visiting American feminist is raped, and later murder occurs.

   Deep Pocket aka The Molehill File. Detective-Inspector Henry Peckover, “a passable published poet,” links the “murder of a May fair tart to a web of political, financial and sexual hanky-panky that encompasses a titled M.P., a police chief superintendent who turns drag queen by night, Middlesex pols and proles, bird hunters of all varieties and an Arab sheik bent on making the green and pheasant land an adjunct of Riyadh.” (Time Magazine, July 17, 1978)

   Zigzag aka The Elgar Variation. A simple escort-the-prisoner run goes awry when the man escapes just as Chief Inspector Peckover is about to take over.

   God Squad Bod aka The Man at the Wheel. Scotland Yard’s newly formed God Squad is following Paster J. C. Jones very closely. A Henry Peckover novel.

    A Free-Range Wife. Peckover finds himself in France at the Chateau de Mordan, where more is on the menu than escargots and chips: a modern-day Jack the Ripper.

   A Healthy Way to Die. An elite spa features beautiful bodies and murder for Inspector Henry Peckover of Scotland Yard.

   Peckover Holds the Baby. Peckover is sent to Belize to track down a cocaine king and lands feet first in a messy brew of murder, drug running and kidnapping.

   Kill the Butler. It’s madcap mayhem when Inspector Henry Peckover goes undercover as a butler on a Long Island estate to find a millionaire’s murderer.

   Peckover Joins the Choir. Chief Inspector Henry Peckover and Detective Constable Jason Twitty go undercover as choir singers to investigate a series of continental art thefts.

   Peckover and the Bog Man. When Sir Gilbert Potter, whose blustering grows offensive at a dinner party, is murdered by a knife through his voicebox, Henry Peckover and his assistant Jason Twitty must investigate.

   While Barzun & Tayor in A Catalogue of Crime were not impressed with the two of Kenyon’s works they read – May You Die in Ireland “A bad first try,” and The Molehill File “rather turgid plotting and prose” – one suspects that humor combined with mystery were not what they were looking for. Craig Rice’s books are panned by them, for example, as being filled with “ill-advised humor.”

   Other commentators have invariably made referenceto the humor in Kenyon’s mystery fiction and have been more favorably impressed. Reading what else they have had to say, along with the synopses above, the impression that’s gathered is that under the veneer of light-hearted gaiety in Mr. Kenyon’s work is a solid core of seriousness and — in the good old Irish tradition — a healthy dose of tragedy.

   Genevieve Holden, the author of seven mystery novels between 1953 and 1976, died Sunday, April 22nd, in Atlanta GA at the age of 87. As a mystery writer born and raised in Mississippi, she is one of the many authors honored by being included in the University of Mississippi’s online archive exhibit entitled Murder With Southern Hospitality: An Exhibition of Mississippi Mysteries.

   Excerpted from the page devoted to her is the following biographical summary:

    “Genevieve Holden is the penname of Genevieve Long Pou, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1919. She attended the University of Mississippi for two years before transferring to the University of Georgia. After college, Pou worked on the Birmingham Post and the Idaho Statesman before writing her first mystery in 1953.

    “Set in the South, Pou’s books epitomize the subgenre termed ‘Gothic,’ known more widely these days as ‘Romantic Suspense.’ Written primarily for a female audience, books of this nature feature heroines in dangerous situations who tend to find themselves attracted to handsome yet potentially menacing men.”

   Expanded from her entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here is her complete bibliography. Each of her books was published first in hardcover by Doubleday, all of them under their famed ‘Crime Club’ imprint.

HOLDEN, GENEVIEVE; pseudonym of Genevieve Long Pou, (1919-2007)

      * Killer Loose! (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1953. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, June 1953. Bestseller Mystery B172, digest pb, abridged. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Sound an Alarm (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1954. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, May 1954. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * The Velvet Target (n.) Doubleday 1956. Ace G-554, pb, 1965. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Something’s Happened to Kate (n.) Doubleday 1958. Ace G-558, pb, 1965. [Lt. Al White; U.S. South]

      * Deadlier Than the Male (n.) Doubleday 1961. Detective Book Club, hc reprint, August 1961. [New Orleans, LA]

      * Don’t Go in Alone (n.) Doubleday 1965 [Atlanta, GA]

      * Down a Dark Alley (n.) Doubleday 1976 [Atlanta, GA]

   Reiterating what was said by the librarians at U-Miss about the nature of her books, the two reprinted by Ace were published as part of their ‘gothics’ line of paperbacks. The cover shown is quite typical; no would-be reader, almost invariably female, would look at the cover and not know what to expect if it were to be picked up and read.

   Covers sometimes lie, however. Belying my own words, Barzun and Taylor include one of her books in A Catalogue of Crime, saying about Deadlier Than the Male:

   Using Ellen Nehr’s Doubleday Crime Club Companion 1928-1991 as a guide, here are some comments on Mrs. Pou’s other novels, based on the blurbs on the inside front dust jacket flaps:

   Killer Loose! The leading character is Janet Milton, who with her young nephew Tolly, goes on the run from a psychopathic killer, apparently dressed in the uniform of a sheriff’s deputy. Lt. Al White is not mentioned.

   Sound an Alarm. In true ‘gothic’ fashion, Linda Stanley is hired as a governess for a grandchild and young heir. The house is a mansion with “cavernous halls with a sense of portending evil.” Lt. Al White again is not mentioned in the blurb.

   The Velvet Target. Eve Halsey is suspicious of her new uncle, believing that her wealthy aunt had made a bad choice in marrying him. Lt. White agrees, and he begins a race against time to rescue Eve when the honeymooners take her along.

   Something’s Happened to Kate. Menacing danger is in store for Kate Woodley after she meets handsome Jim Garrett – and disappears. Lt. Al White not mentioned in the blurb.

   Deadlier Than the Male. It is difficult to say for sure, but contrary to Barzun & Taylor, this seems to be the first book in which a PI is involved, Hank Farrell in this case.

   Don’t Go In Alone. Police detective Captain Mark Latham has a case of three missing Atlanta women on his hands, all of whom went into vacant homes on the real estate market and disappeared.

   Down a Dark Alley. Captain Mark Lathan (sic) returns [a series character previously unknown to Al Hubin] to solve the shocking murder of member of a motorcycle gang. Dinah Prentiss’s Victorian aunt is the primary suspect.

   Without knowing more about her books than this, do you also get the impression that there was a lot more toughness to Ms. Holden’s mysteries than you might have assumed at first?

   As you probably know, a good many writers who are well-known in other fields other than crime and mystery fiction have, on occasion, produced books which fall into the category of interest to us here — even if you have to wrench the boundaries out of shape a little, à la Art Buchwald, whose passing was covered here earlier this year, as you may recall.

   Axel Madsen, who died of cancer a week ago yesterday in California at the age of 76, is one of those authors. His entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is admittedly slim, but there it is nonetheless, and without the need for a stretch of any kind at all:

MADSEN, AXEL (1930-2007)
       * Borderlines (New York: Macmillan, 1975, hc) [Mexico]

   It is doubtful that Mr. Madsen made much money on the book, which will be returned to shortly. He began his writing career as a Hollywood film reporter in the 1960s and 70s, according to an obituary from the online edition of the Examiner, becoming famous if not wealthy by foregoing fiction and instead producing an eye-catching array of biographies of Hollywood stars, fashion designers, and other jet setters of the world.

   Subjects of his books include Billy Wilder, John Huston, Coco Chanel, Barbara Stanwyck, Andre Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, and John Jacob Astor, and the list is far from complete. According to the Examiner, who should know, “his most popular works, however, were salacious Hollywood fare such as Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy in 1988 and The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women in 1995.”

   It was Al Hubin who spotted Mr. Madsen as the author of Borderlines, the book largely taking place in Mexico. One webpage entitled Archaeology in Fiction Bibliography calls it a novel of stela smuggling.

   Strangely enough, googling on the phrase “stela smuggling” brings up only the site already cited. It must not be a very common occupation, it is to be presumed, but it is still somewhat surprising that the profession has not been taken up more widely, considering that a stela is — among other possibilities — a “Maya stone monolith, frequently engraved with hieroglyphs.”

   One online bookseller offering the book for sale describes it thusly:   “A story of international smuggling for the highest of stakes: power and reputation. It is a fast-paced suspense novel that could be taken from today’s headlines – and one that ends with a cynical plot twist.”   Right down our alley.

   Borrowing again from the article in the Examiner:   “Born in 1930 in Copenhagen to a Danish father and French mother, [Axel Madsen] grew up in Paris and worked for the New York Herald Tribune in the early 1950s.

    “Following a stint with United Press International in Canada, he headed to Hollywood in the 1960s. There, he did publicity for movie studios and worked as freelance correspondent for various publications before dedicating himself full time to writing books.”

[UPDATE] 05-01-07.  Excerpted from an email from Victor Berch, who also pointed out several typos, since fixed:

    “Just read your obit notice on Axel Madsen. Am not sure whether you want to include his book: Unisave: Ace Books, [Feb] 1980. It is s-f, but deals with killing off the elderly population (what greater crime??).”

   From the blurb on the cover:  “In a dangerously overpopulated world the first line of defense has been breached. The birth quota had been a civilized measure: each adult had the right to replace himself with one child. Couples with two children reported to their local population care centres and were quietly restricted. But this had not stabilized the worlds population at 24 billion. Now, a harder less ‘civilized’ choice has to be made. The proposition — Geriatric Bingo — death for 1 in 3 amongst ‘eligibles’ in a standing room only world.”

   Not too many mystery writers can claim to have created a whole new sub-genre, but according to his obituary in yesterday’s New York Times, that’s what Paul Erdman did. Mr. Erdman died on Monday, April 23rd, on his ranch in California at the age of 74.

   If I were to list the books to his credit, as supplied by Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, and give you a hint: “fi-fi,” I think perhaps you may be able to work it out. (In all truthfulness, “fi-fi” is not a term I had seen used myself until yesterday.)

ERDMAN, PAUL E(mil) (1932-2007)
      * The Billion Dollar Killing (n.) Hutchinson 1973 [Switzerland] U.S. title: The Billion Dollar Sure Thing.
      * The Billion Dollar Sure Thing (n.) Scribner 1973; See: The Billion Dollar Killing.
      * The Silver Bears (n.) Hutchinson 1974. Scribner, 1974. Film: EMI, 1977 (scw: Peter Stone; dir: Ivan Passer).
      * The Crash of ’79 (n.) Secker 1976. Simon, 1977. [Middle East].

      * The Last Days of America (n.) Secker 1981. Simon, 1981. [Switzerland; 1985]
      * The Panic of ’89 (n.) Deutsch 1986. Doubleday, 1987. [1988]
      * The Palace (n.) Deutsch 1987. Doubleday, 1988. [New Jersey]
      * The Swiss Account (n.) Deutsch 1991. Tor, 1992. [Switzerland; 1945]
      * Zero Coupon (n.) Macmillan 1994. Forge, 1993. [San Francisco, CA]
      * The Set-Up (n.) St. Martin’s 1997. Macmillan (London), 1997. [Switzerland]

   The earliest reference found to “fi-fi” after a quick search on Google was in the opening paragraph of a 1992 review of The Swiss Account:

   In the second paragraph of this review written by Lawrence Malkin for the International Herald Tribune, he goes on to say:

    “Fi-fi” refers to financial fiction, of course, and if Mr. Erdman didn’t invent the genre, he was certainly the one who popularized it. Published in the US as The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, his first book won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America in 1974 for Best First Novel.

   The story is true. Paul Erdman was in a Swiss jail when he wrote that first book. After a bank he established had collapsed in 1970, incurring a loss of tens of millions of dollars, he spent eight months in prison, posted bail, moved to the US and after being convicted in absentia, never returned to Switzerland.

   His novel The Silver Bears was filmed in 1978, the movie starring Michael Caine, Martin Balsam, Cybill Shepherd and Jay Leno. Says IMDB of the story line: “Financial wizard “Doc” Fletcher (Michael Caine) is sent by crime boss Joe Fiore (Martin Balsam) to buy a bank in Switzerland in order to more easily launder their profits.” Things go downhill from there. Turns out that the story (as filmed) is a comedy.

   Mr. Erdman’s unplanned career change obviously went well with him, and the millions of readers he garnered never complained either. Along with the abundant dose of criminal intent in each of his thrillers, there was enough real world application that came with them that, if they were paying attention, his readers could have earned a practical degree in economics or international finance as well. Many of his readers probably already had one.

   Mystery author Rosemary Kutak has two books to credit, both written in the 1940s. Up until today, her entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, has looked like this :

   At some point in her life, as it turns out, Mrs. Kutak seems to have subtracted a few years from her age. Victor Berch has learned that — well, wait, I’ll let him tell it:

   In a later email, Victor reported further that “Rosemary shows up as Margaret Rosemary Norris in the 1910 Census. Daughter of Samuel C. and Luella Norris.”

   This investigation began when Al Hubin had discovered earlier that:

   Al was right and the Library of Congress, as Victor has shown, was wrong. The heading for Mrs. Kutak in the online Addenda for CFIV will look like this

   A blurb for Darkness of Slumber, which was reprinted as Pocket #402 in 1946, described the story thusly: “A young doctor investigates the sudden madness of a beautiful woman.” Another dealer quotes from the Canadian hardcover: “We got murder, we got a madhouse, and we got a beautiful woman — add to that a doctor with a reputation he wants to clear, and you’ve got a book the New York Times Book Review said was one of the ‘Ten Best.'”

   I Am the Cat was reprinted twice in paperback, first as a digest-sized softcover in abridged form as Mercury Mystery #130 (December 1948), then by Collier in 1966 with an introduction by Anthony Boucher.

   My apologies for the lack of a cover image, but one online seller says: “Great old plot here, a Long Island mansion, six guest/suspects, mysterious events, all the typical players in a suspenseful story. […] The dust jacket is dark green, with foreboding picture of a stairway leading to where?”

   Author Freda Kreitzman is difficult to locate in CFIV. The book she was in part responsible for is entitled Eighteen by Thirteen (1998), a group-effort novel published as by The Writer’s Workshop. The entry looks like this:

   She was one of the thirteen writers. Neither she nor any of the other twelve participants have another credit in CFIV. Using social security records, however, Al Hubin has come up with the following dates for Ms. Kreitzman: She was born November 28, 1917, and died December 9, 2006.

   A website page for the Southern Adirondack Library System no longer functioning, but entitled New York State Regional Authors, says of one of the book’s participating writers:

   Freda Kreitzman was 80 or 81 years old when the book was published. Further investigation has revealed that the The Writer’s Workshop met at the Forum, a Marriott Senior Center Living Community in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

[UPDATE] 04-27-07.  Excerpted from an email from Victor Berch, who did some investigation into the other members of The Writer’s Workshop:

   I have the dates of some more of those writers. The hard part is finding the women authors’ maiden names. Some of their obituaries were in local Sun-Sentinel newspaper for Broward county, but [they are not generally available online]. At any rate, here are some of the dates from the SSDI   [Social Security Death Index]:

   Bartel, Molly (or Mollie) [H], May 2, 1911 – Nov. 11, 2003

   Bissette, Doris [W], Aug. 2,1923 – Nov. 28, 2005

   Hartman, Charlotte, Nov. 17, 1923 – Nov. 8, 2005

   Nyfield, Julia [S], May 4, 1909 – Nov. 24, 2003

   Robinson, Leon, Dec. 26, 1910 – Aug. 21, 2001

   Webster, Betty [i.e. Elizabeth J], May 2, 1927 – June 23, 1999

   Erwin Lissau was an interesting one. He was born in Vienna, Austria on Feb. 17, 1916. He and his younger brother were living as students in Zagreb, Yugoslavia after Hitler had taken over Austria. They came to the US in 1939. Erwin joined the Army in 1941 and more than likely obtained his citizenship because of that. He died Aug. 10, 2001.