It was John Herrington who came up with some data on Andrew Spiller, a prolific British author essentially unknown in the US. Not one of his books was ever published in this country. To demonstrate what I meant by “prolific,” here’s his complete bibliography, thanks to CFIV:

SPILLER, ANDREW
   * If Murder Interferes with Business (n.) Archer 1945 [England]
   * Rope for Breakfast (n.) Archer 1945 [England]
   * Whom Nobody Owns (n.) Archer 1945 [England]
   * Queue Up to Listen (n.) Archer 1946 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Crooked Highway (n.) Archer 1947 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * What’s in a Name? (n.) Archer 1947 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * When Crook Meets Crook (n.) Archer 1947 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * And Thereby Hangs- (n.) Paul 1948 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Murder Has Three Dimensions (n.) Archer 1948 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * You Can’t Get Away with Murder! (n.) Archer 1948 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Brief Candle (n.) Paul 1949 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Birds of a Feather (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * The Man Who Caught the 4:15 (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Phantom Circus (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]

   * Alias Mr. Orson (n.) Paul 1951 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Who Plays with Sin (n.) Paul 1951 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * As They Shall Sow (n.) Paul 1952 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Kiss the Book (n.) Paul 1952 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * The Evil That Men Do (n.) Paul 1953 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * They Tell No Tales (n.) Paul 1953 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; Ship]
   * Murder Is a Shady Business (n.) Paul 1954 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Murder Without Malice (n.) Paul 1954 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * It’s in the Bag (n.) Paul 1955 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Ring Twice for Murder (n.) Paul 1955 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Black Cap for Murder (n.) Paul 1956 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Brains Trust for Murder (n.) Paul 1956 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Curtain Call for Murder (n.) Long 1957 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Murder on a Shoestring (n.) Long 1958 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * Sing a Song of Murder (n.) Long 1959 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]
   * The Man Who Dressed to Kill (n.) Long 1960 [Det. Insp. Arthur “Duck” Mallard; England]

   What John recently discovered is that Spiller was born in Bridport, 20 June 1891, and he died in Ealing, London 11 February 1976. Neither his year of birth or the year he died had been known before. And surprisingly enough, what you see here on this page, right now, is all that is known about the author.

[UPDATE] 04-09-07. It hasn’t taken long before some additional information about Andrew Spiller has come to light. Look for that, plus a few more cover images, in this later blog entry, posted today.

   Until a couple of weeks ago, all that was known about Poppy Nottingham, author of four gothic romantic suspense novels included in Crime Fiction IV, except her real name:

NOTTINGHAM, POPPY; pseudonym of Patti Dunaway
   * Hatred’s Web (n.) Ace 1974 [Louisiana]
   * Shadow of a Cat (n.) Ace 1974 [Canada]
   * Without a Grave (n.) Ace 1975
   * Wasted Pride (n.) Ace 1978 [Australia]

DUNAWAY, PATTI; see pseudonym Poppy Nottingham
   * Surrender by the Sea (n.) Jeremy 1979

   What happened a couple of weeks ago was that a woman in California purchased from me one of these gothic paperbacks written as by Poppy Nottingham, explaining that the author was the wife of her former pastor and she remembered both of them well. That was enough information to help Al Hubin locate her husband, Jack Dunaway, still alive and well in Oregon. In a letter Al received from him recently, Mr. Dunaway said his wife was born October 9, 1936 and died September 12, 1988. He also added that “she always wanted to be a writer; she wrote gothic novels because they were clean and she knew what they wanted.”

   The first syllable of Rosemary Gatenby’s last name rhymes with “late,” which means I’ve been pronouncing incorrectly to myself all this time. According to Social Security records, this author of nine suspense thrillers listed in CFIV died January 3, 2007, but her writing career ended with her final mystery in 1979, when she was still a youthful 61.

   Below is a semi-annotated list of the mysteries she wrote, using CFIV as the basis. One gauge of an author’s popularity, perhaps, is how many of their books are picked up by one or the other of the book clubs which were in operation during their career. In Mrs. Gatenby’s case, this would have been either the Mystery Guild or the Detective Book Club. I’ve indicated those of her books which were published by either of the two with a double asterisk (**).

GATENBY, ROSEMARY (1918-2007)

   * Evil Is As Evil Does (n.) M. S. Mill–William Morrow 1967. No paperback edition. “Betty Graham, formerly Liz Melinder, returns to Rockton, NY, to attend a round of parties for herself and her new husband. Little did people know that she had escaped the worst train wreck in history and her former life as wife and mother.”

   * Aim to Kill (n.) William Morrow, 1968. Pyramid X-2094, pb, October 1969.

   ** Deadly Relations (n.) William Morrow, 1970. Pyramid T2528, pb, 1971.

   ** Hanged for a Sheep (n.) Dodd Mead, 1973. Jove 04418, pb, 1977. “Taut dramatic story of a successful, solidly married man who is unable to convince the law and even his friends of his innocence [in his wife’s murder].”

   ** The Season of Danger (n.) Dodd Mead, 1974. Jove 04429, pb, 1977. “How could America’s most famous novelist be held a prisoner by his own guards on his own estate?”

   ** The Fugitive Affair (n.) Dodd Mead, 1976. Jove 04428, pb,1978.

   * The Nightmare Chrysalis (n.) Dodd Mead, 1977. Jove 04805, pb, 1979. “Even before the half nude body of the strangled girl was found in the woods in back of his house, Ferguson Brady’s live had begun to change.”

   * Whisper of Evil (n.) Dodd Mead, 1978. Berkley 04673, pb, March 1982. “The young red-haired woman on the plane to Mexico City did not know that someone urgently wanted her death … that it had already been discussed …”

   ** The Third Identity (n.) Dodd Mead, 1979. No paperback edition.

   Among the various pieces of data that Al Hubin is always on the lookout for, in terms of adding and correcting information in Crime Fiction IV, his all-inclusive bibliography of the field, are the death dates of authors who have passed away, but for whom this information has never been recorded, for whatever reason.

   This does not include the giants of the field, of course. It’s almost always the lesser known writers, those who were popular at one time but whose career in the area of mystery fiction faded away after their death; or those who wrote only a handful of books to begin with, perhaps more for the love of the field rather than for the money, and so never had a following at all.

   Most of these authors were active and their careers ending before the Internet came along. With a few exceptions, most of today’s authors have their own web pages or have been interviewed often enough online or in the print media that we know as much about them as we could possibly want to know.

   What I’m grouping together this evening are some of the authors whose deaths have been recently discovered. There is no other factor that they have in common than that. Truthfully, each of these deserves a blog entry of their own, and if I ever accumulate enough interesting facts about any one of them, that is exactly what will I will do.

[UPDATE] 07-01-07. And that is exactly what I have done. Each of the authors in this original post now has his or her own entries, dated the same day as this first one. Follow the links to find each of the author’s new entries:

   You came to the right person, as I knew Michael – not very well, but better than probably any other writer left alive. Michael’s middle initial was E., and while I’m not familiar with Travis, according to his son, it’s Mike’s book. He wrote a number of books for Monarch and Pinnacle in the late 50’s and early 60’s. In 1962 he went to Southern California, where he wrote a number of soft-core porn books for various outfits, like Uptown Books – all pretty harmless in today’s vernacular! I have a copy of The Sex Life of the Gods, and it’s pretty typical hackwork… Better than some, but not up to the stuff Sturgeon and Farmer were doing a few years later.

   Mike was in many way Beam’s protege, and his closest friend during his last few years in Williamsport, Pennsylvania before Piper shot himself on November 9, 1964. They met at a local Williamsport writers’ group in 1959 and they spent a lot of time together talking about writing and drinking. Mike was absolutely devastated by Beam’s suicide. In fact, he blamed himself for not realizing that Beam needed help. The truth was that Mike was married, with two young sons and working full time as a reporter, and had neglected, for these very good reasons, his friend Beam Piper.

   I’m sure Piper understood, and his problems were far deeper than any small loan would have addressed. Piper was a very private man and would have never burdened a friend with his personal or financial problems. He took what he thought was the only sensible way out of what he saw was a closed box — a stalled career, the recent death of his friend and long-time agent Kenneth White, a bad case of writer’s block and no money. He was too proud and self-sufficient to ever go on relief!

   I first heard about Mike Knerr through the offices of Ace Books and my then editor Beth Meacham, when Mike called her, extremely irate over my factual errors about his “best friend, H. Beam Piper” in my introduction to the Piper short story collection, Federation. I told Beth to have Mike call me direct and we had a good conversation; I told him that I was only writing what other people had told me that Piper had said about his ex-wife and other factual errors. After Mike calmed down, he admitted that Piper “told a lot of bullshit about his past” and we ended the conversation on a good note. We corresponded and he provided me some information on Beam’s life and quotes from his diaries, which he had in his possession.

   After our talk Mike discovered the “lost” Fuzzy novel (Fuzzies and Other People) in one of the trunks that he’d taken from Piper’s apartment mislabeled in a box as “second pages.” In lieu of payment (Ace Books offered him several thousand dollars — Mike called it “blood money”) for the “lost” Fuzzy book — Mike stuck a deal whereby he would write a biography of Beam based on his first-hand knowledge and Piper’s diaries which ran from 1955 to his death. Ace agreed and he sat down and over the next several years wrote the book Piper. Unfortunately, when he turned the book in Ace reneged and told him they were no longer interested. He was about to destroy it when I called to obtain his permission to quote his letters for the article, “The Last Cavalier: H. Beam Piper,” I was writing for Analog Science Fiction–Fact magazine.

   Mike was mad as hell, and I managed to calm him down a bit and told him it would be a crime if he destroyed Beam’s legacy in a fit of pique, since he had the only copy of the diaries. Instead, I suggested that he send me a copy of his Piper biography for safe keeping. You could have knocked me over with a paper clip when three months later it arrived in my P.O. Box! He sent me the original manuscript; I know that because it was backed with several other manuscripts (a lot of old timers did this to save on paper). I am certain that I have the only copy in existence…

   I lost contact with Mike in 1992, when he was living in Sausalito with his third or fourth wife. He was a good looking guy, and a great man for the ladies. He moved around a lot, and did the typical writer’s gigs, worked at Sylvania, a local newspaper, etc.

   See the attached photos. In person, he had a raspy voice and a violent demeanor, like one of his own anti-hero protagonists! He wasn’t someone you’d mess around with.

   His books, like The Violent Lady (Monarch, 1963), were pretty good for the time and the outfits he wrote them for. He really wanted to write historical novels based in Central Pennsylvania, but couldn’t sell them. His agent was Kenneth White, who died in 1964, which is when Mike decided to cut back his writing to hobby status, although he would have never put it that way!

   I talked to his son recently and he told me his father was born on May 31, 1936 in Williamsport, PA (where Piper was based in the early 60’s, which is my connection). He was a hunter, civil war re-enactor, horseman, built flintlock rifles, and loved boats and sailing.

   Mike was a former newspaper man (the Shamokin newspaper) and in 1973 moved permanently (except for a short time in Woolrich, PA) to Southern California, specifically Alameda, Sausalito and L.A.

   Here’s the list of titles his son gave me of Knerr’s works: The Violent Lady, 3 Willing Females, The Sex Lives of the Gods, Heavy Weather, Sasquach, Suicide in Guyana, Brazen Broads, Operation: Lust, and Travis. He isn’t sure if this list is complete, probably not since many were written under pseudonyms and/or were lost in his many moves…

   Mike Knerr died in 1999. I don’t have the actual date, just a note from his son that he died at age 64.

   This is about the sum total of my knowledge of Mike, except that I liked him even though he was a rough cob – I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted him as an enemy!

   NOTE: A chapter excerpted from The Last Cavalier, John’s biography of H. Beam Piper, has been uploaded to the original Mystery*File website. Entitled “California Dreamin’” and largely in Mike Knerr’s own words, it describes his experiences writing soft-core porn in California before returning to Pennsylvania, and the time he spent with H. Beam Piper in Williamsport before the latter took his own life.

  Hi Steve,

   Flynn died in Deal, Kent on 5th February 1958. He must have been writing right up to the end as his last two books followed later in 1958.

   Unfortunately, that is the sum of my findings. Kent record office know nothing about him. But I do have a couple of suggestions to follow up.

   [As far as Brian Flynn is concerned as a writer] Barzun in Catalog of Crime, says of the one book he lists “Straight tripe and savorless. it is doubtful, on the evidence, if any of his others would be different.”

   I know nothing about him and reckon he is what I would call a journeyman writer, writing prolifically to make some money. Though he must have some effect to have written 50 books, which is 49 more than lot of people. Perhaps being so prolific, and keeping the same character throughout, was his error.

   He wrote for what we call library publishers, publishers whose aim was to produce books which libraries would buy – often by quantity rather than by author. If libraries bought his books, he would keep on writing. Sadly, just because libraries buy one’s books it does not necessarily mean you are a good writer. Most books, especially fiction, will find library readers because “they have read everything else on the shelves” (This is personal experience speaking, having worked for 3 decades in a public library and seen some right rubbish get elevated to “I must look out for the next one”!) I suppose some library borrowers will read anything as they don’t need to buy it.

   Sadly, I get the impression that Flynn was one of the lucky ones who found his niche and carried on till he died (and two books did come out after he died).

   How good was he actually? No idea. Barzun condemned him on one book, right or wrong. But I simply think he was writing for the library market and that could be a limitation as far as style and improvement would be concerned. In those 50 books there may have been a good writer struggling and failing to improve his lot.

   Anyway, will let you know if I find anything else.

   A few months ago I was asked if I had any information on writer Mary McMullen, who wrote nineteen mysteries between 1952 and 1986, when she passed away. Most of these books were published by Doubleday’s Crime Club imprint and can be generally classified as being in the “malice domestic” genre. Without a series character to maintain readers’ interest in her stories, she’s on the verge of being forgotten, but no one writes that many works of crime fiction without having had a substantial following at the time.

   What’s the most interesting about Mary McMullen, perhaps, is her family. When I did a bibliography for mystery writer Helen Reilly following Michael Grost’s excellent analysis of her crime fiction, I said:

   Helen Reilly’s primary character was Inspector Christopher McKee. In Mike’s essay on her, he considers the McKee books as very early police procedurals, but he also connects her work up with the Black Mask style of writing, in the hardboiled pulp tradition.

   My impression of Ursula Curtiss’s books is that they are much like her sister Mary McMullen’s, but stronger on the suspense. If you’ve read any of them recently, though, and can tell me otherwise, I’d surely like to be corrected. Ursula Curtiss is listed in CFIV as the author of 22 novels and one collection of short stories, the books appearing at regular intervals between 1948 and 1985.

   Besides James Kieran, the brother mentioned above, there was another well-known member of the family, John F. Kieran, the sportswriter who was a long-time panelist on radio’s Information Please in the 1940s, among other accomplishments.

   James Kieran’s impact on the world of mystery fiction is small, but the reason will soon become clear. He has only one entry in CFIV, as follows, in slightly expanded form:

   About this time, Victor Berch, whom I’d asked for assistance on the original inquiry about Mary McMullen, sent me the following email:

   I was following the discussion about Mary McMullen, and when the subject of James Kieran came up, I decided to look into him. Don’t ask why. Maybe, it’s because he’s a Gold Medal author and I have the two printings of Come Murder Me (GM 150 and 419).

   [In Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV] James Kieran’s dates [are given] as 1911-1986. I think this is the wrong James Kieran. Out of curiosity (more likely habit), I decided to check with the Copyright Office. Come Murder Me was first registered March 7, 1951. The copyright was renewed Feb. 15, 1971 by Mrs James Kieran. his wife. Then the thought crossed my mind “Why should his wife had to renew the copyright if he was still alive?

   Anyhow, the record also gave her full name as Dagmar N. Kieran along with the Mrs. James Kieran appelation. So, I ran a check on her. She was born May 10, 1908 and died Sep. 22, 1985 according to [Social Security records].

   However, there is another data base that I sometimes check. It lists people coming in to the USA from foreign ports, both citizens and aliens. The data taken from passports usually give the name of the person, the birth date, place of birth and present address.

   And so I found Dagmar N. Kieran and her husband James M. Kieran returning from a trip to Curacao Dec. 7, 1936. James M. Kieran’s birth date was given as September 23, 1901, born in NYC. A check through the NY Times led me to an extensive obituary, which I’ll send along [soon]. He died January 12, 1952. So, his dates and full name should be Kieran, James Michael, Jr., 1901-1952.

   He died, that is to say, only year after his only mystery novel was published. As for his family, a brief article in Timemagazine also mentions the Kierans (December 25, 1939):

   Some excerpts from the NY Times obituary for James Kieran will follow, one of them toward the end very interesting, especially if true. It does not seem as though the statement would be in the obituary, if it were not. Of course the degree of involvement is not specified, and it may have been minimal. But here, read for yourself:

   If anyone knows more, we’d love to know about it.

   The entry for Gertrude Walker in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, looks like this, or at least this is how it looked until this past week, supplemented slightly by the information on the paperback editions:

   WALKER, GERTRUDE (1920- )
      * * So Deadly Fair (Putnam, 1948, hc) [Minnesota]. Bestseller B105, digest pb, abridged, 1948. Popular Library 424, pb, 1952.
      * * Diamonds Don’t Burn (Jenkins, 1955, hc)
      * * The Suspect (Major, 1978, pb) [Los Angeles, CA]

   So Deadly Fair has a modest reputation among fans of hardboiled mysteries, but otherwise is probably little known. I don’t remember seeing a copy myself, in any of its various editions, although it’s not uncommon, at least in paperback form, so I probably have.

   From the blurb on the hardcover edition: “When the Minneapolis-bound freight train pulled out of the small Middletown, Minnesota, freight yard, it left behind it very little of importance: a few rolls of barbed wire, some packing cases, and me. And god knows I wasn’t important. I wasn’t important to anyone. Not even to myself.”

   An investigation into both the book and the author began with an email from British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon to Al Hubin:

   Al sent the email on to me, along with his reply, and I’ll get back to that in a minute.

   Taking a look at Walker’s credits in the film-making industry, the following caught my eyes, all more or less in the crime fiction genre:

  Mystery Broadcast, 1943. “A radio detective (Ruth Terry) sets out to solve an old murder case, with the help of her sound man and another radio detective.” [Additional dialogue.]

  Whispering Footsteps, 1943. “A bank clerk in a small town returns home from a vacation in Indianapolis, and hears a story on the radio about a girl found murdered there. The description of the killer fits him exactly, and when two girls are murdered in his town, suspicion falls on him…” [Co-screenwriter.]

  Silent Partner, 1944. “Reporters investigating the death of a friend begin to suspect that their newspaper’s editor may have been responsible for it.” [Screenwriter.]

  End of the Road, 1944. “A crime writer believes that a man imprisoned for committing the notorious ‘Flower Shop Murder’ is innocent of the crime…” [Co-screenwriter.]

  Crime of the Century, 1946. “Ex-convict Hank Rogers is searching for his brother Jim, a newspaperman, and becomes involved with a group of people trying to conceal the death of the president of a large corporation…” [Screenwriter.]

  Railroaded!, 1947. “Sexy beautician Clara Calhoun, who has a bookie operation in her back room, connives with her boyfriend, mob collector Duke Martin (John Ireland), to stage a robbery of the day’s take.” [Original story.]

  The Damned Don’t Cry, 1950. “The murder of gangster Nick Prenta touches off an investigation of mysterious socialite Lorna Hansen Forbes (Joan Crawford), who seems to have no past, and has now disappeared…” [Based on Gertrude Walker’s story, “Case History.”]

  Insurance Investigator, 1951. “When a businessman who has had a double indemnity policy taken out on him dies mysteriously, his insurance company sends an undercover investigator to town to determine exactly what happened.” [Screenwriter and co-author.]

   Some of these I’m sure you may have heard of, others most probably not, but they all seem to fit the category of black-and-white film noir, some more than others, of course. Walker also has a few miscellaneous credits in television, including a stint on The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1958).

   The IMDB link that Jamie provided actually leads to biography of Charles Winniger, long-time comedian and song-and-dance man. Here’s the key line: “Divorced from wife Blanche in 1951, Charlie subsequently married stage actress-turned-novelist and screenwriter Gertrude Walker whom he originally met on Broadway when he returned to “Show Boat” in 1932 (Gertrude played the role of Lottie).”

   Here now is Al Hubin’s reply to Jamie, as sent on to me:

   The birth and death dates now having been established with a certainly, it was time, I thought, to take a closer look at the books she wrote.

   The link Jamie provided to the “Rara-Avis” group was also the only one that I found that was of any great use. It was a message posted by Etienne Borgers, in response to another’s request for information about her. It reads as follows:

   There’s some duplication of information here, so please forgive me for that. I haven’t yet looked into the short fiction that Walker may have written. Etienne’s mention of a book entitled The Face of Evil, one that Al Hubin didn’t seem to know about, was what attracted my attention the most. That the date (1978) was the same as the book The Suspect (Major, 1978) made me wonder if perhaps the two books were the same. Neither one showed up for sale on the Internet, but knowing that Bill Pronzini collects the paperbacks published by Major, I emailed him.

   In a moment, the results of that inquiry.

   In the meantime Jamie had sent me a scan of the jacket blurb for the book he had, the British hardcover, Diamonds Don’t Burn. My thought was that perhaps the British edition was simply retitling of the earlier US book, So Deadly Fair, but Jamie said no, the in book he had mentioned the first one by title. I think the scan is readable, and it looks as though the book itself would be worth reading. Why it was never published in the US is a question as yet unanswered.

   An email reply from Etienne Borgers was in essence an apology that he hadn’t any more information about Walker than was posted earlier, but no matter. He had already posted more information about Gertrude Walker than was available anywhere else.

   Etienne offered to double check with friends, but by this time, I’d heard back from Bill Pronzini. One of the questions I’d asked him is whether of not The Suspect, the 1978 paperback from Major, actually existed, there being no copies offered for sale on the Internet:

  Steve:

   Al is surely right that Gertrude W. Winninger and Gertrude Walker were one in the same individual, and that her correct birthdate is 1902, not 1920.

   Attached is a photo of Gertrude Walker from the back jacket of her first novel, So Deadly Fair. The accompanying bio calls her “a young woman,” and the photo indicates the same, but my guess is that it’s just publicity hype and the photo an old one.

   My copy of the book includes a separate publicity photo in which she looks older, closer to her age at the time the novel was published, 46.

   The Suspect does indeed exist; attached are scans of the front and back covers. If it’s a novelization of a 1943 screenplay, it was definitely updated to the 70s milieu. I can’t say for sure, but The Suspect is probably a retitling, either by the author or Major Books, of a manuscript submitted as The Face of Evil. I don’t know of any novel by Walker or anybody else published in 1978 or thereabouts under the latter title.

   Diamonds Don’t Burn and So Deadly Fair are definitely separate books. Fair is a sort of hardboiled and frenetic road novel that jumps from Minnesota to New York City and points in between and is narrated by a male protagonist named Walter Johnson.

  Best,

   Bill

   Here’s the front cover of the Major book. It’s obviously a tough book to find. If it’s on your want list, good luck to you!

   But what’s more important is the back cover. Check the plot synopsis of the movie Whispering Footsteps up above, and read the back cover again:

  

   Bingo. We have a match.

       —

[UPDATE] 03-27-07. Excerpted from an email I received this morning from Victor Berch, suggestions which I’ve accepted with many thanks:

  Steve:

   You might want to consider adding these to Gertrude Walker’s repertoire:

1935–Mary Burns, Fugitive.
   Had a minor acting role in this crime film.

1943–Danger! Women at Work
   Described as a homefront comedy, but the hijacking of trucks is part of the plot. GW responsible for the story along with Edgar G. Ulmer.

1945–Behind City Lights.
   Described as a crime drama with songs. GW responsible for the adaptation.

1946–My Dog Shep
   Described as an animal and youth drama. (involves a kidnapping plot). GW was screenwriter.

Best,

   Victor

 

Wed 21 Mar 2007

Obituary: ARNOLD DRAKE (1924-2007)

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[2] Comments 

   Noted comic book writer Arnold Drake died last week at the age of 83. Among his many accomplishments in that particular field were the stories he wrote for “Batman” in that hero’s early days; he was also the creator of the supernatural hero “Deadman” and the action team called “The Doom Patrol.”

   Of the many comic book sites where the news of his passing was announced, Mark Evanier’s blog, with his personal insight into Mr. Drake’s career, may be the single best place on the net to learn more.

   It was author Edward D. Hoch, however, who first spotted Arnold Drake’s name as being included in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. In an email sent first to Marvin Lachman, however, he wondered if it was indeed the same Arnold Drake. It was, as it turns out, the same man.

   The entry is small, but it’s there. Here it is, as slightly revised over the last couple of days. After an afternoon of discussion, there has been an addition made, but we’ll get to that in a minute:

DRAKE, ARNOLD (Jack) 1924-2007. Joint pseudonym with Leslie Waller, 1923- , q.v.: Drake Waller, q.v.
       The Steel Noose (Ace, 1954, pbo) [New York City, NY]

   You may not be able to read the small print on the cover. It says along the top: “Blackmail – and a love-starved blonde!” The leading character is a hardboiled gossip columnist named Boyd McGee. (That there was only the one novel meant that McGee could never be upgraded to a series character.)

   An new addition to Mr. Drake’s entry in CFIV was mentioned earlier. In 1950 Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller teamed up to produce what is generally considered to be the first “graphic novel,” a digest-sized paperback entitled It Rhymes with Lust. The interior black-and-white art was by the highly collected GGA artist, Matt Baker. (For the uninitiated, GGA = Good Girl Art.)

   Is It Rhymes with Lust a crime novel? When I found my copy and skimmed through it, I described it to Al Hubin thusly: “The lady on the cover wants to run a copper town (her name is Rust) and she hires thugs and at least one killer (with a machine gun) to keep the miners in line; and there’s graft involved, and the cops.”

   Machine guns and graft do not necessarily make a novel a work of crime fiction, of course. In this case they are incidental to the plot, and not the heart of the story itself. The back cover will make this clearer, I believe:

   Marginal works like this are already included, but indicated by a dash, and in the Addenda #12 to the Revised Edition of CFIV, that’s how it’s now given:

WALLER, DRAKE Joint pseudonym of Leslie Waller, 1923- , q.v., and Arnold (Jack) Drake, 1924-2007, q.v.
      -It Rhymes with Lust. St. John pb, 1950 (Graphic novel.)

   It’s a minor footnote in the field of crime fiction, but as was indicated earlier, it made history in the world of comic books as the very first graphic novel. If you check the shelves at your favorite chain bookstore, you will see how large a statement that is.

 

Tue 20 Mar 2007

Obituary: LELIA KELLY (1958-2007)

Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[15] Comments 

   Jiro Kimura, who has now owned and operated The Gumshoe Site for 11 years, reports that legal-thriller writer Lelia Kelly lost a long battle with breast cancer on March 13th. She was only 48.

   According to information on her website, Ms. Kelly, a banker for 15 years, left the world of finance in 1998 and turned to writing instead. Her first two books are included in Crime Fiction IV: 1749-2000, by Allen J. Hubin. A third title has since been added to her bibliography, all in her Atlanta-based Laura Chastain series:

KELLY, LELIA (1958-2007)
      * * Presumption of Guilt (NYC & London: Kensington, 1998, hc)
      * * False Witness (Kensington, 2000, hc)
      * * Officer of the Court (Kensington, 2001, pbo)

   In her first appearance, Presumption of Guilt, Laura Chastain is a senior associate at a prestigious Atlanta law firm, but when the situation arises, she is surprised to discover she is good at criminal defense work, which is far from being a specialty of the firm.

   According to the Booklist review of the book: “After she successfully defends the son of a corporate client against highly publicized rape charges, an Atlanta policeman strolls into her office, asking for help with charges that he killed a suspected child molester in custody at a police station. Despite management’s misgivings, Laura’s supervisor, poetry-spouting Tom Bailey, supports her desire to take the tabloid-ready, racially divisive brutality case.”

   By the time False Witness appeared, Laura had become an assistant DA, giving up her former (and much higher paying) position. Publishers Weekly described the story thusly: “Wealthy Christine Stanley has been murdered in her upscale Atlanta residence, leaving behind two shocked and bewildered children. Suspicion falls upon her husband, financial manager James T. Stanley, even though his alibi seems airtight (he was out of town on business).” Laura is also said to have a “a sweet, low-key romance.”

   In Officer of the Court, according to one reviewer on Amazon.com: “Lelia Kelly’s heroine once more surprises the reader by not following any pre-established rules of the game as a prosecutor. Kelly presents the interesting point of view, of what a prosecutor faces, when he/she knows the person on trial is really innocent of the crime. Chastain follows her own moral code, and not necessarily what the law, or the pattern of activities we have allowed to surround the law, dictates.” As of this date, all six reviewers on Amazon have given the book the maximum five stars out of five.

   A fourth book was promised, but in a letter she posted on her website in October 2002, Ms. Kelly saddened her readers by saying that her cancer had returned. There would be a wait, she said, before Laura’s next case could be told. Sadly, it appears that the next chapter was not to be.

 

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