In his Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (2007) [reviewed here ] Barry Forshaw has a chapter, “Cops,” with 31 novel entries. Merely two of the novels listed were published before the 1980s: Ed McBain’s The Empty Hours (1962) and Georges Simenon’s The Madman of Bergerac (1932).

   Ian Rankin, creator of Inspector John Rebus and currently the most popular crime fiction author in Britain, gets one entry, for The Falls (2001), as well as a page devoted to his works in general. Freeman Wills Crofts, creator of Inspector French, the greatest police detective of the Golden Age of detective fiction (roughly 1920-1940), gets no mention in the “Cops” chapter, nor anywhere else in Forshaw’s Guide for that matter.

   This omission is an injustice to Freeman Wills Crofts. No doubt this author is out of fashion these days, but in his own way he is as important to the history of the crime fiction genre as Ian Rankin is. To be sure, Ian Rankin, the leading figure in the so-called “Tartan Noir” movement, has been a powerful force in moving British detective fiction away from its cozy, genteel, village and country house gentry stereotype, but in his own day Crofts did much the same thing, albeit more gently.

   While Crofts’ most famous creation, Inspector French, is a much more conventionally “nice” individual than Rankin’s John Rebus, Crofts’ tales of French’s criminal investigations give readers a different picture of the Golden Age British detective novel than that which has been derived from the better-known works of the British Crime Queens (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh).

   By exploring Freeman Wills Crofts’ Mystery in the Channel (1931) and Ian Rankin’s Hide and Seek (1990), I want to highlight not only the differences between Crofts and Rankin and their fictional detectives, but — which may be surprising to many — the similarities.

   Crofts created Inspector Joseph French as a series character (he appeared in a long series of novels published between 1924 and 1957, the year of Crofts’ death) in order to get away from the eccentric amateur detective figure so strongly associated with British mystery. French won immediate popularity around the globe, becoming one of the best-known fictional crime investigators of the British Golden Age.

   A plain, no-nonsense, middle class cop, Inspector French stands in stark contrast with such glamorous aristocratic sleuths as Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Allingham’s Albert Campion and Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn (though Alleyn himself is a cop, he is rather a twee one), as well as Christie’s eccentric Belgian, Hercule Poirot, and her nosy village spinster, Miss Jane Marple.

   In 1936, Crofts’ American publisher, Dodd, Mead, informed potential Crofts readers that the author had deliberately built up Inspector French “as a foil to the theatrical and eccentric fictional sleuth” and that the police detective therefore was “a model of thoroughness, persistence and hardwork” — an ideal embodiment of the bourgeois virtues.

   Mystery in the Channel, the seventh Inspector French novel, shows both the detective and the author at the height of their powers, in a typical case involving not misdoings in a baronial mansion or a quaint Edwardian village, but modern corporate corruption and crime involving two countries.

   In the effective opening of Mystery in the Channel, the corpses of two men are discovered on a yacht adrift in the English Channel. Both men were felled by gun shots. It is soon discovered that the slain pair were officers in Moxon’s General Securities. (“You’ve heard of it, of course; one of the biggest financial houses in the country.”)

   Could these deaths be related to the rumors in the City that Moxon’s was headed for a complete crash? It certainly seems so, when it is discovered that a million and a half pounds has been looted from the firm’s coffers.

   Scotland Yard’s investigation involves delving into matters both financial and logistical. What were the two murdered businessmen doing on the yacht and who could have gotten on the yacht to murder them? To some this may sound dry, but Crofts manages to keep the reader in doubt and suspense until a dramatic climax is reached, when the dauntless French nabs the guilty.

   In Mystery in the Channel, Crofts, a retired railway engineer who, admittedly, knew more about trains than he did the workings of Scotland Yard, makes some effort to portray the Yard as the great investigative machine that it was. Besides French, other officials seen working on the Channel case are:

    ● Sir Mortimer Ellison, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, French’s boss throughout the series.

    ● Police Sergeant Carter, French’s chief underling throughout much of the series.

    ● Inspectors Tanner and Willis. These men both featured in earlier, pre-French Crofts’ novels investigating cases of their own, Tanner in The Ponson Case (1921) and Willis in The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922). Tanner, we learn, is Inspector French’s “greatest friend.”

    ● Mr. Honeyford, “finance expert from the home office.”

    ● Inspector Barnes, “the Yard’s nautical expert.”

   French also has to deal with local law enforcement officials in both England and France.

   Admittedly, Crofts’ treatment of the police often is naïve, but his books certainly mark a departure from the Golden Age stereotype of amateur detective and country houses/villages. How does Crofts compare with Rankin, a hugely popular author widely deemed the modern master of the British police procedural?

   Hide and Seek, the second Ian Rankin novel about Inspector John Rebus, appeared in 1990. In this tale, Rebus investigates the death of a young male drug addict found expired, surrounded by Satanic symbols, in a squalid Edinburgh “squat” (abandoned building).

   Everyone but Rebus writes the death off as an accidental overdose, but the tenacious and stubborn detective eventually discovers darker truths, namely that the young man was murdered and that a malign conspiracy involving very prominent people is afoot in Edinburgh.

On the surface Inspectors French and Rebus are very different sorts — one might call them British crime fiction’s good cop and bad cop. French has an ideally blissful marriage with his wife, Emily, or Em; and he has a daughter, Eliza. (To be sure, there is tragedy in French’s life in that his son was killed in the Great War, but Crofts later forgot that he had given Joseph and Emily children, so perhaps this loss does not matter so much.)

   Although in a couple of Crofts’ novels Em has what she calls a “notion” and contributes an insight that helps French solve his case, essentially she is a firmly domesticated woman placidly devoted to her husband’s welfare and what the author terms her “mysterious household employments.”

   Contrastingly, in Hide and Seek we learn that John Rebus’s wife has left him and his household behind, taking their daughter, Samantha (Sammy), with her. Rebus leads a much lonelier, angst-filled existence than French, and he has no one to tidily arrange his domestic life.

   Instead, he goes through a series of girlfriends, drinks too much and smokes too much — all patterns of behavior alien to the the abstemious and upright Joseph French. (It is rather shocking when a frustrated French at one point in Mystery in the Channel declares, “Curse it…I could do with a bottle of beer.”) Like French, Rebus seems to have some religious inclinations, but, unlike French, Rebus is unable to sustain them.

   Rebus also has pricklier relationships with his superiors than does French, although Rankin’s old-fashioned and courtly Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas “The Farmer” Watson bears considerable resemblance to Crofts’ Sir Mortimer Ellison. (Over the course of the Rebus novels things continue to change, however: Watson retires in 2001’s The Falls and is replaced by a woman — awkwardly for Rebus one of his former sexual partners.)

   Nevertheless, French as well as Rebus sometimes bucks the system. In Hide and Seek, Rebus finally exposes the criminals by a not-by-the-book stratagem that is like something Bulldog Drummond and his jolly amateur crime fighting pals might have tried in an outrageous Sapper thriller from the 1920s.

   For his part, French for the sake of expediency on occasion employs skeleton keys to conduct warrantless searches and sometimes “bluffs” recalcitrant witnesses (misleadingly threatens them with arrest) to get the information he wants.

   Not surprisingly, given the tenor of modern times, Rebus’s cases tend to involve much racier subject matters — bad stuff — than those of Inspector French. In Hide and Seek, for example, Rebus confronts a case involving such unsettling matters as Satanism, drug abuse and (male) prostitution. Certainly no such things crop up in Crofts’ Mystery in the Channel!

   Yet in a key respect the subject matters of the books are strikingly similar. In both Hide and Seek and Mystery in the Channel, the specter of business corruption and criminality looms large indeed. Both Rankin and Crofts take quite condemnatory views of the corporate world. Here is Sir Mortimer Ellison on the men of Moxon’s General Securities:

   The author himself chimes in with a similar note, informing us of Sir Mortimer that “for the wealthy thief who stole by the manipulation of stocks and shares and other less creditable methods known to high finance, whether actually within or without the limits of the law, he had only the most profound enmity and contempt.”

   In his influential survey of detective and crime fiction, Bloody Murder, Julian Symons declares that “Golden Age writers would not have held it against [E. C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case character Sigsbee] Manderson that he became rich by speculation.”

   By making such an assertion, Symons reveals he did not sufficiently comprehend the work of Freeman Wills Crofts. When writing Mystery in the Channel Crofts clearly was influenced by the deplorable state of the world since 1929, after the Wall Street Crash and the onset of the Great Depression (events that also have resonance today).

   In Hide and Seek Rankin makes his distaste with Big Business as manifest as Crofts had sixty years earlier. Mark the words Rankin puts into the mouth of one of his businessmen villains, who arrogantly attempts to bribe Rebus:

   But John Rebus, like Joseph French, proves sterling and incorruptible. In the end, Rebus and French share this defining quality with each other and, indeed, with Wimsey, Campion, Alleyn, Poirot, Marple and the rest of the crime and mystery genre’s Great Detectives: a determination to find answers, to establish truth, to restore some semblance of order in a world of chaos and confusion.

ELIZABETH LEMARCHAND – Who Goes Home? Walker, US, hardcover, 1987. No US paperback edition. UK edition: Piatkus, hardcover, 1986.

   Vacationing Chief Superintendent Tom Pollard and his wife go hiking through the Crownmoor District and, while resting near a dilapidated farmhouse, see it visited by a young man who, finding no one home, soon leaves.

   The next night, the house is heavily damaged by a fire of suspicious origin. Shortly afterward, someone is killed in a hit-and-run accident, carrying drugs and a map to the farmhouse. Police, digging through the rubble for more information, discover a twenty-year-dead skeleton, and Scotland Yard — meaning Pollard and his assistant Inspector Toye — is called in.

   The trouble with this one, besides the fact that none of the characters show any sign of life, is that I guessed the identity of the skeleton’s original owner almost as soon as it was dug up. Add to this massive doses of coincidence used to help Pollard solve the case, and you have what Mystery Aficionados refer to as a Real Clunkeroo.

   ELIZABETH LEMARCHAND.   1906-2000.   Series Character: Insp./Supt. Tom Pollard in all.

* Death of an Old Girl, 1967.
* The Affacombe Affair, 1968.

* Alibi for a Corpse, 1969.
* Death on Doomsday, 1971.
* Cyanide with Compliments, 1972.
* Let or Hindrance, 1973.
* Buried in the Past, 1974.

* Step in the Dark, 1976.
* Unhappy Returns , 1977.
* Suddenly While Gardening, 1978.
* Change for the Worse, 1980.

* Nothing to Do with the Case, 1981.
* Troubled Waters, 1982.
* The Wheel Turns, 1983.
* Light Through Glass, 1984.
* Who Goes Home?, 1986.
* The Glade Manor Murder, 1988.

Previously on this blog:   Suddenly While Gardening (reviewed by Steve Lewis)

L. L. ENGER – Swing. Pocket; paperback original; 1st printing, August 1991.

   This is the second adventure of Gun Pedersen, a former baseball slugger who’s now a righter of wrongs, a Travis McGee type of non-PI, the kind of guy who you’d want on your side, one who sticks up for his friends. I haven’t read the first one, Comeback, but I have a copy, and I’m sure I’ll dig it out and read it one of these days.

   Pedersen’s home is Minnesota now, and the scene makes several dramatic changes back and forth between the cold, ice-covered lakes of the North Country and the sunny climes of Florida, where a former teammate is trying to hang on in the Senior League.

   Moses Gates is his name, and there’s always been a connection in his past with another ballplayer who once committed suicide (by hanging) during spring training. Now a reporter looking into the story is also dead, again by hanging, and Moses’ alibi looks awfully shaky.

   This is a story far larger than life, and heads off in directions Gun hardly expects when he begins his crusade. (I didn’t expect them either, and I’m still a little amazed by it all.) There is far more action (of an extremely violent sort) than there is detection, but if that’s what you’re looking for, this is a story that will certainly get your blood flowing just that much more quickly.

   For what it’s worth, though, I also found it a little depressing, in tone, in substance, and in style. (That’s a personal reaction, I hope you realize, and not necessarily a critical comment.)

       Bibliographic Data:

L. L. ENGER. Pseudonym of Leif & Lin Enger [brothers]. Series character: Gun Pedersen in all.

    1. Comeback. Pocket Books, pb, 1990. [Nominated for an Edgar.]

    2. Swing. Pocket Books, pb, 1991.
    3. Strike. Pocket Books, pb, 1992.
    4. Sacrifice. Pocket Books, pb, 1993.

    5. The Sinner’s League. Penzler Books, hc, 1994.

PATRICIA MOYES – Death and the Dutch Uncle. Holt Rinehart & Winston; hardcover, 1968. Owl, paperback, 1983. Original UK edition: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1968.

   After not reading her books for years, for no good reason I can think of, I’ve recently enjoyed several of Patricia Moyes’ detective novels, coming to think of her as one of the few remaining practitioners of the old-fashioned detective novel.

   As this book shows, however, she should stay away from writing thrillers, or books where Inspector Tibbett (and wife Emmy) get tangled into international intrigue.

   It begins innocently enough, with the gangland slaying of a small time gambler and miscellaneous hoodlum (appropriately nicknamed “Flutter Byers”) in a private bar. What connection could there be between this death and PIFL (the Permanent International Frontier Litigation)? A recent squabble between two obscure African nations brings this backwater London agency into the headlines, and Tibbett surprisingly finds himself right in the thick of it.

   As long as he stays in London, he seems to be on solid ground. It’s when he takes off for Holland (with wife Emmy) as part of a one-man (plus wife) effort to save one of the members of PIFL from an assassin’s bullet that that the novel began to lose its way.

   Not even the mention, several times over, of Inspector van der Valk helps that much, although it does give Tibbett some sort of support in a jurisdiction the recently promoted Scotland Yard superintendent simply doesn’t have. (Van der Valk himself never makes an appearance.) And of course Emmy gets into trouble…

   What I objected to even more, however, was the clumsy attempt to have a clue that means nothing to the reader (*) become a major key to the mystery. Moyes then compounds the insult by refusing to let us in on the explanation Henry gives Emmy on page 171.

   A minor matter, perhaps, but after spending as much time on this case as I had up till then, I thought I deserved something more than being blown off like this.

    (*) Well, unless you know Dutch, that is. I certainly don’t, and I’m also still miffed about the time it took to go back through the previous 170 pages to see if there was anybody with the name Filomeel I’d missed. (As it turns out, I did and I didn’t.)

Rating:   D plus.

[UPDATE] 10-16-11.   As you can tell, I felt let down by this one. What I can’t tell you is anything more about the book than this. I don’t remember it, not at all.

   Let me return, though, to my first paragraph, in which I referred to Moyes as one of the last practitioners of the old-fashioned (British) detective novel. I still believe this to be true, some 18 years later, though of course there have been some contenders who have come along since then.

   Kathi Maio’s 1001 Midnights review of A Six-Letter Word for Death, to be found here on this blog, agrees with this stance. On the other hand, I fear that in the same passage of 18 years, Patricia Moyes has become all but forgotten. I can’t say why, and perhaps it is not so. Opinions welcome!

   I am reprinting this from Fatal Kiss #13 (May 1980), the same issue in which I reported the results of the first annual Top Ten Tec Poll.

   The poll consisted of my listing ten authors whose last names began with either the letter A or B, then requesting respondees to rate them on a scale from 1 to 10. If you were not familiar with an author, then one of three categories were to have applied:

       A = I never intend to read this author
       B = I’d like to read this author but I haven’t yet
       C = I’ve never heard of this author [or no vote]

   There were 42 responses, including my own, from mystery readers scattered all over the world. Here are the results:

Author // Numerical Responses // Average // A — B — C

    Eric Ambler     35     6.83     2 — 3 — 2

    Nicholas Blake     26     6.65     3 — 7 — 6

    Margery Allingham     32     6.00     2 — 6 — 2

    Lawrence Block     23     5.89     1 — 11 — 7

    Earl Derr Biggers     30     5.67     6 — 3 — 3

    Charlotte Armstrong     28     5.29     5 — 6 — 3

    Edgar Box     22     5.28     4 — 11 — 5

    George Bagby     24     4.44     6 — 9 — 3

    Edward S. Aarons     23     4.23     11 — 5 — 3

    Carter Brown     24     3.79     10 — 5 — 3

   One small surprise was the healthy showing of Lawrence Block, obviously not familiar to many people in 1980, but those who’d read him liked what they’d seen. [In 1980, Block had written a sizable list of paperback originals, the first three Matt Scudder books, and the first two “Burglar” novels.]

   As I said at the time, I expected Ambler and Blake to do well, and they did. Aarons and Carter Brown did not do well with female voters, while Allingham and Charlotte Armstrong did not do as well with most male readers. And yes, I knew that Edgar Box was really Gore Vidal.

   Since response was so high, I thought at the time that it was worth doing again. I’ll list the authors I suggested for the next poll, all of whose last names began with “C.” I don’t know if I have the issue in which the results were tabulated, or even if they ever were. I’ll have to do some searching in the garage where most of my back issues are stored.

   If you’d care to record your opinions on the following authors, either in the Comments or by emailing me directly, feel free to do so:

Victor Canning, John Dickson Carr, M. E. Chaber, Raymond Chandler, Leslie Charteris, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Manning Coles, James Hadley Chase, Tucker Coe, George Harmon Coxe, Frances Crane, John Creasey, Edmund Crispin, Freeman Wills Croft, Ursula Curtiss.

   From the introduction:

    “Davis Dresser (1904-1977) was an American writer best known for the Michael Shayne mystery series, written under the pseudonym of Brett Halliday. […]

    “Besides writing the Michael Shayne series, Dresser was also prolific as a western writer [including many of the “Powder Valley” series as Peter Field] and had cut his teeth writing ‘love novels’ for the lending library publishers of the 1930s. […]

    “[This] is an attempt to draw together, in one place, all of Davis Dresser’s books and pseudonyms, in as many editions as possible, and to explicate the attributions of the more obscure pseudonyms.”

   Check it out here:

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/KRJ/Davis_Dresser_Bibliography.pdf

DOROTHY BOWERS – The Bells of Old Bailey. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1947. Originally published in the UK: Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1947, as The Bells at Old Bailey.

   While it would at first appear that my bias against detective-story characters who do not report information to the police ought to be shaken by the main event in this novel, later incidents validate my opinion.

   Miss Tidy, the proprietress of Minerva Hatshop, Beauty Parlor and Teashop, receives two poison-pen letters following a series of unlikely suicides in Ravenchurch, where her establishments are located, and Long Greeting, where she lives.

   Taking the letters to the police, Miss Tidy argues that the suicides were well-executed murders. Dubiety on the suicides greets her efforts, and there’s no small suspicion that Miss Tidy wrote the letters herself. But then —

   To go on would reveal information that some readers would rather not know as they begin the novel. Suffice it to say that Bowers has written a charming novel about an English village, with all that that implies — to wit, blackmail and murder — and including an antiquarian bookseller, a detective-story writer, and a mainstream novelist for the biblio enthusiasts.

   Also there is fair play for the most part. Bowers is another author I am adding to my long list of writers whose books are sought after.

Bibliographic Notes:   Dorothy Bowers wrote four crime novels before The Bells of Old Bailey, all featuring Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe. All were first published in the US by Doubleday Crime Club. They are difficult to find as first editions; if anyone might be looking for copies to read, all four have been reprinted by Rue Morgue Press.

    Postscript to Poison. Hodder 1938.
    Shadows Before. Hodder 1939.
    Deed Without a Name. Hodder 1940
    Fear for Miss Betony. Hodder 1941. US title: Fear and Miss Betony.

SHEPARD RIFKIN – McQuaid in August. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979. No paperback edition.

   Even though Damian McQuaid is a homicide detective, for the NYPD, this is definitely not your average sort of police procedural. It’s August, it’s hot, and McQuaid has only two days to solve a case on his own before someone discovers the body of the girl in whose apartment he spent the night.

   Finding the killer is not enough. Without the usual power of the police department behind him to help gather the evidence he needs, McQuaid is forced to resort to an intricate cat-and-mouse game of active harrassment in order to produce a “voluntary” confession.

   As a leading character, his excursions beyond the letter of the law evoke both admiration and a surprising lack of sympathy; part of the fascination reserved to the reader appears to be watching him stay, barely, on the side of sanity himself.

Rating:   A Minus.

Bibliographic Data:

    The Lt. Damian McQuaid series —

McQuaid. Putnam 1974.

The Snow Rattlers. Putnam, 1977.
McQuaid in August. Doubleday, 1979.

   Not in the series is The Murderer Vine (Dodd, 1970), recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime (2008). It’s a work of fiction based on the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive.

   Rifkin’s other crime novel is Ladyfingers, a paperback original published by Gold Medal in 1969.

C. ST. JOHN SPRIGG – Death of an Airman. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935. First published in the UK: Hutchinson, hardcover, 1934.

   Fortunate it is for the minions of the law that Edwin Marriott, Bishop of Cootamundra, Australia, is in England on leave and wants to learn how to fly. For it is he who spots an anomaly when the flight school’s principal instructor expires after his plane crash: rigor mortis never sets in.

   A delayed post-mortem uncovers a bullet wound in the dead man’s head. It can’t be suicide. It also cannot be murder since the pilot was flying alone and no other plane was seen in the area.

   Scotland Yard Inspector Bernard Bray, one of Sprigg’s continuing characters, is called in to assist in the investigation. Even he can’t puzzle out the absence of rigor in the corpse, though he does get on the trail of drug smugglers and peddlers (yes, young people, like sex, this was not something invented in your generation).

   With the help of the Bishop, Bray and the locals break up the drug ring and finally figure out how the deceased pilot met his fate in an entertaining novel that provides some interesting information about the early days of flying.

   BIBLIOGRAPHY:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

SPRIGG, C(hristopher) ST. JOHN. 1907-1937.

   Crime in Kensington (n.) Eldon 1933 [Insp. Bernard Bray; Charles Venables] US title: Pass the Body. Dial, 1933.
   Fatality in Fleet Street (n.) Eldon 1933 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
   Death of an Airman (n.) Hutchinson 1934 [Insp. Bernard Bray]
   The Perfect Alibi (n.) Eldon 1934 [Charles Venables; Insp. Bernard Bray]
   The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face (n.) Nelson 1935. US title: The Corpse with the Sunburned Face. Doubleday, 1935.
   Death of a Queen (n.) Nelson 1935 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
   The Six Queer Things (n.) Jenkins 1937.

Editorial Comments:   There is a longer biography of Sprigg on the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, along with a photo.

   A challenge I might present to you I’m sure I would win is to have you collect all of the books above, or try to. I do not believe you could do it. If you have a collection already, you must have put it together some 40 years ago or more. At one time the US editions of his books were relatively common, but no more, especially in jacket. (The one shown above came from a Sun Dial reprint.)

   As to this particular book, I’ve had a copy since forever, but I’ve never read it. I do wish that Bill Deeck had commented on how clever the “impossible crime” aspect was. At the moment, all it is is a tease.

VIOLET TWEEDALE – The Beautiful Mrs. Davenant. Frederick A. Stokes, US, hardcover, 1920. First published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins, hardcover, 1920. Currently available from many sources as a Print On Demand book.

   Why did the beautiful and mysterious widow Hilda Davenant choose to live outside Great Glentworth near a Thorpe, with whom she had done for all time but whose seal is indelibly imprinted on her life?

   Why did Geoffrey Thorpe, who was extravagant and indebted when poor and penurious when he achieved wealth, allow the lovely Lake House to deteriorate around him?

   Why when the presumed dead Mark Thorpe is mentioned does Geoffrey turn pale and cast “an affrighted glance” over his shoulder? Why is Geoffrey dominated by his housekeeper? Is there a ghost who wanders the halls of Lake House in the early a.m.?

   Surely some reader with more forbearance than I possess got farther into the book, subtitled” A Novel of Love and Mystery,” than I did.

   If so, I would be willing to chuckle at the answers as long as I don’t have to discover them for myself.

Biographical Notes:   Mrs. Tweedale has her own page on Wikipedia, which is where I’ll direct you if you wish more information about her. I’ll be concise here and excerpt only the following:

    Googling on the Internet will reveal much more about the author. In her day, she was quite a personality.