More authors’ entries from Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Most of these authors’ names are unfamiliar now, but if you take the time to read through their biographies, brief as they are, you’ll see how well known they were in their day.

BRITTON, KENNETH PHILLIPS. Poet, playwright, writer. Co-author (with Roy Hargrave, 1908- , q.v.) of one mystery play included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

HAPGOOD, HUTCHINS. 1869-1944. Born in Chicago. Add: educated at the University of Michigan, at Harvard, and in Berlin and Strasburg. Later a journalist and drama critic for the Chicago Evening Post; noted most as a social critic and an anarchist. Author of one novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:

      The Autobiography of a Thief. Duffield & Co., US, hc, 1903; Putnam, UK, 1904. Add setting: New York City. From an online New York Times review: “… a graphic and picturesque account of life in the under world.” [Text online.]

HARDING, JOHN WILLIAM. 1864-? Add biographical information: Born in London, England; educated there and in Paris. Later on editorial staff of New York Times; short story writer and playwright. Author of one novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Note that his full middle name was used on this title:

      A Conjurer of Phantoms. F. Tennyson Neely, US, hc, 1898. [An “elusive supernatural novel,” says one ABE bookseller.]

HARDY, ARTHUR SHERBURNE. 1847-1930. Add biographical information: Born in Andover, Massachusetts and educated in Boston, Switzerland and at West Point; Professor of Civil Engineering, Los Angeles College, and of mathematics at Dartmouth College, 1884-1893. Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, 1893-95. Consul-General to Persia, 1897-1899; U.S. Minister to Greece, Romania and Serbia, 1899-1901, to Switzerland, 1901-1903, and to Spain, 1903-1905. Among other writings, the author of one detective novel and one story collection included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Series character: Inspector Joly, who appears in the novel and six of the eleven short stories.

      Diane and Her Friends. Houghton Mifflin, US, hc, 1914, hc. Story collection. Queen’s Quorum title.

      No. 13, Rue du Bon Diable. Houghton Mifflin, US, hc, 1917.

HARGRAVE, ROY. 1908- . Add year of birth & biographical information: born in New York; actor, director and author. Co-author (with Kenneth Phillips Britton, q.v.) of one play included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

      Houseparty. French, US, pb, 1930. [3-act play.] Add setting: Massachusetts; Academia (Williams College).

HARRADEN, BEATRICE. 1864-1935. Add biographical information: Born in Hampstead, London; member of several societies for social reform and women’s rights. Author of two novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. This is now the author’s complete entry:

      Out of the Wreck I Rise. T. Nelson & Sons, UK, hc, 1912. Add US edition: Stokes, US, 1912; also add setting: England. Note: The title is a quote from Robert Browning. [Text online.]

      Search Will Find It Out. Mills & Boon, UK, hc, 1928. Setting: England. Note: The title is a quote from Robert Herrick.

HARRISON, EDITH OGDEN. 1862-1955. Add year of birth and biographical information: Born Edith Ogden in New Orleans; in 1887 married Carter Henry Harrison, who served at least five terms as mayor of Chicago. Noted author of juvenile fiction, travel books and autobiographical works, plays and novels; contributor to Chicago Daily News. Author of two tales of the Royal Canadian Mounties listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. This is now the author’s complete entry:

      The Lady of the Snows. McClurg, US, hc, 1912. Setting: Canada. Illustrations by J. Allen St. John. Add film: 1915; see synopsis here. [Text online.]

      The Scarlet Riders. Chicago, IL: Seymour, US, hc, 1930. Setting: Saskatchewan, Canada. “Western adventure novel of train robbery and banditry.”

   Mystery writer Lyn Hamilton died of cancer earlier this week (September 10th) at the age of 65. At a pace of a book a year over the past 11 years, she was the author of an equal number of mystery adventures featuring her series character Lara McClintoch.

   From Lyn Hamilton’s website: “The series features Toronto antique dealer Lara McClintoch, who travels the world in search of the rare and beautiful for her shop, finding more than a little murder and mayhem along the way. Each book in the series is set in a different and exotic location and calls upon the past in an unusual way.

    “The first book in the series, The Xibalba Murders, was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award for best first crime novel in Canada, and the eighth, The Magyar Venus was nominated for an Ellis award for best crime novel. The Celtic Riddle formed the basis for the 2003 Murder She Wrote TV Movie starring Angela Lansbury.”

   The Chinese Alchemist (2007) had already been announced as Lara McClintoch’s final appearance.

   Also from the author’s website: “Courses in both cultural and physical anthropology in her student days at the University of Toronto inspired a life-long interest in ancient cultures. Lyn was for six years the Director of the Ontario Cultural Programs Branch, the branch responsible for the licensing of all archaeology in the province as well as for museum and heritage conservation support programs.

    “Lyn visits each of the locales she writes about, and has led tours to come of the sites in her books. Her books have been translated in Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Turkish and will soon be available in Croatian, Greek, Hungarian and Thai.

    “She was writer-in-residence at the North York Central Library in 2003, and held the same position at the Kitchener Public Library in 2004. She lives in Toronto, and like her sleuth Lara is something of an antiques addict.”

    More details about the author can be found in online obituriaries on the Toronto Star and CBC websites.

   The Lara McClintoch Archaeological Mysteries. The entire series was published by Berkley. The first two were paperback originals; all of the others were published first in hardcover, then in paperback.

      The Xibalba Murders (1997)
      The Maltese Goddess (1998)
      The Moche Warrior (1999)

      The Celtic Riddle (2000)
      The African Quest (2001)
      The Etruscan Chimera (2002)
      The Thai Amulet (2003)

      The Magyar Venus (2004)
      The Moai Murders (2005)

      The Orkney Scroll (2006)
      The Chinese Alchemist (2007)

Short story:

       “Stark Terror at Tea-Time.” Original story with Lara McClintoch. Included in Death Dines In, edited by Claudia Bishop and Dean James; Berkley, 2004.

MANDA SCOTT – The Crystal Skull. Delacorte Press, hardcover, April 2008. Paperback reprint: Bantam Books, February 2009. UK edition: Transworld, January 2008.

   According to Mayan lore, the world will end on 21/12/2012. The only salvation for humanity lies in the activation of 12 crystal skulls entrusted to the protection of a network of keepers.

   Stella Cody O’Connor, a descendant of Cedric Owens, the keeper of the ninth skull, who was murdered in 1599 after hiding the skull from the dark forces who would destroy it, with the help of her husband, Kit, retrieves the skull from a cave in which it has been buried.

   This is, however, only the beginning of her task, and the novel traces, with mounting tension, Owens’ odyssey in the past and Stella’s present-day struggle to protect the sacred skull.

   Owens’ odyssey takes him to the New World, where the powers of the Skull are revealed to him. The Skull is no inanimate object, the mute subject of the quest. Its keeper bonds with it, and it is that spiritual and emotional bond that is, perhaps, the most distinctive quality of this intelligent thriller, giving it an unusual and moving resonance.

         Bibliographic data [expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

SCOTT, MANDA (Catriona).

      The Dr. Kellen Stewart series —

   Hen’s Teeth. Women’s Press, UK, pb, 1996; Bantam, US, 1999.

   Night Mares. Headline Press, UK, hc, 1998; Bantam, 1999.
   Stronger Than Death. Headline, UK, hc, 1999; Bantam, 2000.

Note: The series is set in Glasgow, Scotland, and environs. Dr. Stewart is a doctor, a therapist and a lesbian, and in various ways she’s personally involved with each of the cases of murder she works on.

       Crime/mystery novels —

   No Good Deed. Headline, UK, 2001; Bantam, US, 2002. [Nominated for an Edgar, 2003.]

   The Crystal Skull. Transworld, UK, 2008; Delacorte, US, 2008.

    More authors’ entries from Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. I’m still working in the H’s, with a couple of small dividends at the top and bottom:

GIBBS, HENRY CHARLES HAMILTON. 1870-1942. Name at birth of Cosmo Hamilton, q.v.

HAINES, DONAL HAMILTON. 1886-1951. Add biographical information: Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan; educated at the University of Michigan, where he also later taught journalism and freelance writing. Contributor to many magazines, including Everybody’s Magazine, The Popular Magazine, and The American Boy. Besides writing a number of boys’ sports and adventure books, the author of one mystery novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:

      Shadow on the Campus. Farrar & Rinehart, hc, 1942. Setting: Michigan; Academia. Intended for younger readers.

HALL, GEOFFREY HOLIDAY. 1913-1981. Confirm both dates. Born in Santa Cruz, NM. The author of two mystery novels listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below. This is the author’s complete entry.

      The End Is Known. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1949; Heinemann, UK, hc, 1950. Setting: New York City; Montana. Add the latter; also add film: Cineritmo, 1993, as La Fine e Nota (scw: Cristina Comencini, Suso Cecchi d’Amico; dir: Comencini). [A review of the book can be found here on this blog.]

      The Watcher at the Door. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1954. Setting: Vienna.

HAMILTON, CATHERINE J(ANE). 1841-1935. Add as a new author. Born in Somerset, England, of Irish parents. Lived in Ireland for more than thirty years from 1859; author of short stories, verse and serials, contributing to Weekly Irish Times and Ireland’s Own, among other periodicals.

      The Flynns of Flynnville, as by C. J. Hamilton. Ward, 1879. Setting: Ireland. Novel based on “the murder of a bank-manager by a constabulary officer called Montgomery.” [Online text.]

      -True to the Core: A Romance of ’98. White, 1884. [Two volumes.] Setting: Dublin. “The story of the love of a Kerry peasant girl for the ill-fated John Sheares.”

HAMILTON, COSMO. 1870-1942. Name at birth: Henry Charles Hamilton Gibbs, 1870-1942, q.v. Born in England; his working byline was based on his mother’s maiden name. Correct name and year of birth; add biographical information: Settled in the US by the 1920s; novelist and playwright, authoring many London musicals and Broadway plays. One novel and four story collections are included in his entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Not all of the short fiction is criminous. Add the book of four plays below. Also of special note is the one novel, also cited below:

      Four Plays. Hutchinson, UK, 1925; Little, US, 1924. Plays, with the one criminous so indicated below with a *. Note: “The New Poor” was also published separately as: Who Are They? French, 1929.
            The Mother Woman
            * The New Poor
            Scandal
            The Silver Fox

      -The Princess of New York. Hutchinson, UK, hc, 1911; Brentano’s, US, hc, 1911. Silent film: Famous Players, 1921 (scw: Margaret Turnbull; dir: Donald Crisp). [The daughter of an American steel magnate heads for Europe but is waylaid on the liner by a pair of confidence tricksters.] Note: Although working behind the scenes, the 22 year old Alfred Hitchcock developed his cinematic vernacular by compiling the title cards for this film. (From the IMDB link just preceding.)

      Who Are They? See Four Plays.

HANKINS, ARTHUR P(RESTON). 1880-1932. Pseudonym: Emart Kinsburn, q.v. Born in Sac City, Iowa. Add biographical information: Under his own name, besides writing several western and adventure novels, the author of two crime-related titles included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. His shorter work appeared in many pulp magazines such as Detective Story Magazine, Western Story Magazine and Argosy All-Story Weekly.

KINSBURN, EMART. Pseudonym of Arthur P(reston) Hankins, 1880-1932, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of several western novels as well as two crime thrillers included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
      Tong Men and a Million. Chelsea House, hc, 1927. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown: “Soft-footed Chinese gunmen stealing forth at night to shoot down the victims whom their tong has marked for destruction!”

      The Wizard’s Spyglass. Chelsea House, hc, 1926.

PAT FRIEDER – Signature Murder.   Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1998.

   I’ve not found out much about the author. This is the first in a set of two mystery novels to feature a semi-disbarred lawyer named Matty Donahue. The second she wrote is Privileged Communications (Bantam, pbo, June 2000), and other than that, I’ve found nothing else online that’s solid enough to say about her for sure.

   Inside the back cover of Signature Murder, though, is the following information: Like her series character Matty, Pat Frieder is a lawyer, and she lives in Albuquerque, NM. Matty lives in Sante Fe, however, and is unmarried. Her creator is also much more successful in her career, having once served as New Mexico’s Attorney General for Criminal Appeals.

   While Matty, on the other hand, is barely survinving, doing essentially grunt work for a prestigious law firm that gives her a dinky office she can barely turn around in – she’s essentially a charity case, having at one time lost her license because of her involvement in a situation very much like the one that’s at the center of this book.

   An eccentric elderly woman has been killed — mutilated in fact, with her hand cut off — and it may be Matty’s fault, since the handyman suspected of the deed had served time for a similar crime — hence the title — and it was Matty who brought him into the household.

   So, strictly against the wishes of the two partners of the firm she’s working for, she decides to solve the case on her own – and one of the trails leads straight back to one of those very same partners.

   There’s also an illegal immigrant from the Middle East who’s been romancing the dead woman’s maid, forgers of Native American artifacts, victims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (to which Native Americans are very susceptible), a witness who’s disappeared, the grandson of a good friend of the dead woman who may inherit some money (not from the dead woman) if he’s still alive and not on drugs, a well-meaning but mostly inept public defender, and Matty’s former therapist, whose assistance is welcome but whose intentions regarding Matty could easily now be considered unethical.

   And I probably missed something. The first half to two-thirds of the book makes for very easy reading, but there’s simply too much in it (nearly 300 pages of small print) for it all to fit comfortably together, not to mention one question I have – and an important one – that never gets answered. The case does get solved, however, with the help of lots of clues, including a good many false ones, causing Matty a good deal of wear and tear before she’s finished.

   So it’s a good thing she’s a survivor, with at least one more adventure in her life that a book could be written about. Would I read it, if it were easily on hand? Yes, even with my complaints, Matty’s problems can easily become addictive, or so I’ve found out.

    Another grouping of authors’ entries from Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   Notable here is the addition of mystery writer Celia Fremlin, who died last June, and the untangling of the books credited to “John Mowbray,” the latter being the pen name used by two different writers quite independently of each other, as you’ll see below:

FREMLIN, CELIA (MARGARET). 1914-2009. Add year of death. Born in Kingsbury, Middlesex; died in Bournemouth, 16 June 2009. Sister of nuclear physicist John H. Fremlin. Married twice, first to Elia Goller in 1942 (died 1968), three children (all of whom predeceased her), then to Leslie Minchin in 1985 (died 1999). Author of 19 books of psychological suspense listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, three of them story collections. Her first novel, The Hours Before Dawn (Gollancz, 1958; Lippincott, 1959), reviewed here on this blog, was the winner of the 1960 MWA Edgar for Best First Novel of the Year.

HADATH, (JOHN EDWARD) GUNBY. 1871-1954. Born in Lincolnshire, England. Pseudonyms: John Mowbray, Shepherd Pearson, qq.v. Add biographical information: Born in Owersby, Lincolnshire, England. Journalist, correspondent for provincial papers, then London correspondent for Italian press. Under his own name, the author of more than 100 books for boys involving English public school life and wartime adventure, plus many stories appearing in periodicals such as Chums, Happy Mag., and The Captain. Other pen names used for his short fiction: James Duncan, Felix O’Grady, Shepperd Pearson. One of his boys’ adventure books is shown below (S. W. Partridge & Co., circa 1905).

MOWBRAY, JOHN. Pseudonym of (John Edward) Gunby Hadath, 1871-1954, q.v. Other pseudonym: Shepherd Pearson, q.v. Under the Mowbray byline, the author of five titles included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, three of them likely to be boys’ adventure stories. See below. This is now the author’s complete entry under this byline.
      The Frontier Mystery. Collins, UK, hc, 1940.
      The Megeve Mystery. Collins, UK, hc, 1941. Setting: France.
      On Secret Service. Collins, UK, hc, 1939. Setting: Europe. Probably intended for younger readers.
      The Radio Mystery. Collins, UK, hc, 1941. Probably intended for younger readers.

      -The Way of the Weasel. Partridge, UK, hc, 1922. Setting: England; Academia. Probably intended for younger readers.

MOWBRAY, JOHN. Pseudonym of John (George) Haslette Vahey, 1881-1938, q.v. Other pseudonyms: Henrietta Clandon, John Haslette, Anthony Lang, Vernon Loder & Walter Proudfoot. Under this pen name, the author of one crime thriller to be included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Delete the other five titles in his previous entry; these should be attributed to (John Edward) Gunby Hadath, also writing as John Mowbray. See above. Below is now the author’s complete entry under this byline.
      Call the Yard. Skeffington, UK, hc, 1931. Setting: England.

PEARSON, SHEPHERD. Pseudonym of (John Edward) Gunby Hadath, 1871-1954, q.v. Other pseudonym: John Mowbray, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of one crime thriller included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      The Second Count. Gifford, UK, hc, 1944.

VAHEY, JOHN (GEORGE) HASLETTE. 1881-1938 Pseudonym: John Mowbray, q.v. Other pseudonyms: Henrietta Clandon, John Haslette, Anthony Lang, Vernon Loder & Walter Proudfoot. Born in Belfast; educated at Foyle College, Londonderry and Hanover. Under his own name, the author of 14 crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, four of them marginally. Also criminous are a large number of books written under each of the pen names above.

RUFUS KING – Malice in Wonderland. Doubleday Crime Club, 1958. Queen’s Quorum 117.

   Rufus King had two distinct “careers” in crime fiction. The first was as a writer of traditional Golden Age whodunits, beginning in 1927 and continuing until 1951. He produced twenty-two novels during this period, most of which are entertaining despite some stilted prose; they are marked by clever plotting, interesting backgrounds, and touches of gentle humor.

   King’s best work, however, is his short fiction, particularly that written during his second “career” in the 1950s and 1960s when he abandoned novels altogether and concentrated on stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

   Malice in Wonderland, the second of King’s four collections, was so highly regarded by the Mssrs. Queen that they included it in their Supplement Number One (1951-59) to the Queen’s Quorum.

   The eight stories here expose the violence and corruption of the fictional town of Halcyon, Florida — after the fashion, if not in the style, of John D. MacDonald. Queen said that in these stories King “pungently, almost maliciously impale[s] … the Gold Coast, that fabulous neon strip between Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, with its cross section of natives and tourists, of greedy heirs and retired gangsters (alive and dead).”

   The best story in the collection, “The Body in the Pool,” traces the strange connection between the state of Florida’s electrocution of murderer Saul (“Stripe-Pants”) McSager and the selection of Mrs. Warburton Waverly as the county’s “Most Civic-Minded Woman of the Year.”

   Also excellent are the title story, in which a girl tries to decode a message from a long-dead playmate; and the long novelette “Let Her Kill Herself,” in which an unpleasant woman makes an extremely disturbing discovery.

   Some of King’s early short stories are collected in Diagnosis: Murder (1941). Two other collections of stories about Halcyon and the Florida Gold Coast, both of which rank with Malice in Wonderland, are The Steps to Murder (1960) and The Faces of Danger (1964).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

   I’ve recently annotated another grouping of authors’ entries from Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   If the author in entry one below seems out of place at first, you’ll see why it’s here soon enough, I believe. One significant update is the disambiguation of two authors with very similar sounding names, Harlan Eugene Read and Harlan (M.) Reed.

BROTHER JAMES. Pseudonym of [Dr.] James Reynolds, – 1866, q.v.
       -The Adventures of Moses Finegan, an Irish Pervert. Duffy (Dublin), 1885. Previously published as by James Reynolds: Duffy (Dublin), 1870.

READ, CHARLES A(NDERTON). 1841-1878. Add as a new author. Born in Ireland; merchant in Rathfriland, County Down; went to London in 1863, where he became a journalist. During his writing career the author of numerous sketches, poems, short tales and nine novels, two of which are criminous in nature:
       Aileen Aroon; or, The Pride of Conmore. Henderson (London), 1870. Setting: Ireland. First appeared in The Weekly Budget. “Garratt O’Neill is falsely accused of murder.”
       Savourneen Dheeush; or, One True Heart. Henderson (London), 1869. Setting: Ireland. First appeared in The Weekly Budget. [Based on the Wildgoose Lodge Murders of 1816.]

READ, HARLAN EUGENE. 1880-1963. Add biographical information: Born in Jacksonville IL; educated at Oxford University and Brown’s Business College; editor; did syndicated newspaper work; St. Louis radio news commentator. Author of one book in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
      -Thurman Lucas. Macmillan, US, hc, 1929. Add setting: St. Louis, East St. Louis IL, and Nevada; early 1900s. [After several scrapes with the law in the Midwest, a man becomes a success in the mining fields of Nevada.]

REED, HARLAN (M.) 1913-2001. Add middle initial, years of birth & death, and the following biographical information, replacing the previously incorrect data: Born in Nome, Alaska, raised in Seattle. graduate of University of Washington, where he also taught creative writing. Ran family oil business in Vancouver WA after WWII; photographer and jazz pianist. Author of two mystery novels in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Below is the author’s complete entry. Series character in each: hard-drinking “idiosyncratic” private eye Dan Jordan.
      The Case of the Crawling Cockroach. Dutton, hc, 1937. Setting: Ship.

      The Swing Music Murder. Dutton, hc, 1938. Setting: Seattle WA.

REID, LIZZIE C. Add as a new author. Short story writer who lived in Belfast, Ireland; her stories appeared in The People’s Friend and other periodicals.
      -The Doctor’s Locum Tenens. Sealy (Dublin), 1907. Setting: Ireland. “A lady doctor’s adventures in an Ulster town. […] Interwoven with a narrative of mystery and plotting there is a pleasant love story.”

REYNOLDS, [DR.] JAMES. -1866. Add as a new author. Pseudonym: Brother James, q.v. Lived in Booterstown, County Dublin. Short story writer; contributed several serials to Duffy’s Fireside Magazine under the additional pen names E. L. Berwick and “A Well-Known Novelist.”
      -The Adventures of Moses Finegan, an Irish Pervert. Duffy (Dublin), 1870. Also published as by Brother James: Duffy (Dublin), 1885. Setting: Ireland. [The protagonist, although married, goes with a benefactor’s daughter to America, where he is later sentenced to death for her murder.] Note that the word “pervert” in the title is used here in the religious sense, as the opposite of “convert.”

CELIA FREMLIN – The Hours Before Dawn. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1958. J. B. Lippincott, US hardcover, 1958. Reprint US paperbacks: Dell D422, 1961; Dell 3770, Great Mystery Library, 1966.

   Celia Fremlin has the unusual ability to take a perfectly normal, if not mundane, situation and create an atmosphere of sheer terror. The Hours Before Dawn, which won an Edgar for Best Novel of its year, introduces us to Louise Henderson, a sleep-starved young housewife with a fretful new infant that is causing complaints from both her family and neighbors.

   The only person who doesn’t complain is Miss Vera Brandon, the boarder the Hendersons have recently taken in. In fact, Miss Brandon is so self-effacing and quiet that at times the Hendersons don’t even know she is in the house.

   Soon the boarder’s actions begin to arouse Louise’s suspicions, and she finds herself doing all sorts of things she has never done before — attempting to search the woman’s room, contacting total strangers for information about her, and finally taking the baby for a nocturnal stroll in his pram, only to fall asleep and lose him in a park.

   The author skillfully weaves truly frightening events into Louise’s daily routine of meals, housecleaning, and childcare, and her superb characterization has the reader thoroughly on Louise’s side — and just as terrified as she is — by the time the story reaches its surprising conclusion.

   Other Fremlin titles of note: Uncle Paul (1960), Prisoner’s Base (1967), The Spider-Orchid (1978), With No Crying (1981).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

CELIA FREMLIN, R.I.P. It was Martin Edwards who first made known the news of mystery writer Celia Fremlin’s passing, announcing it on his blog three days ago.

    She died this past summer in a nursing home in Bournemouth, on June 16th, with very few in the world of mystery fandom knowing about her passing until now.

    Besides Martin’s appreciative tribute to her work, plus a long array of followup comments, a longer obituary by Rebecca Tope can be found online here. She says in part, in one poignant paragraph:

    “Her personal life was, in fact, full of tragedy. From the death of her mother when she was seventeen, she went on to lose three children and two husbands, before going blind and slowly sinking into a twilight world that lasted for several years. Her books are light and humorous at first glance, but just below the surface is an acknowledgment of the truly terrible things that can happen to a person. Her style is distinctive and the books immensely enjoyable.”

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

FREMLIN, CELIA. Pseudonym of Celia Margaret Goller, 1914-2009. UK publishers only, except for one case of a US retitling:
      The Hours Before Dawn (n.) Gollancz 1958.

      Uncle Paul (n.) Gollancz 1959.
      Seven Lean Years (n.) Gollancz 1961. US title: Wait for the Wedding, Lippincott 1961.
      The Trouble Makers (n.) Gollancz 1963.
      The Jealous One (n.) Gollancz 1965.

      Prisoner’s Base (n.) Gollancz 1967.
      Possession (n.) Gollancz 1969.
      Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark (co) Gollancz 1970.
      Appointment with Yesterday (n.) Gollancz 1972. No US edition.

      By Horror Haunted (co) Gollancz 1974. No US edition.

      The Long Shadow (n.) Gollancz 1975.
      The Spider-Orchid (n.) Gollancz 1977.

      With No Crying (n.) Gollancz 1980.

      The Parasite Person (n.) Gollancz 1982.
      A Lovely Day to Die, and other stories (co) Gollancz 1984.
      Listening in the Dusk (n.) Gollancz 1990.
      Dangerous Thoughts (n.) Gollancz 1991.
       Echoing Stones (n.) Severn 1993.
      King of the World (n.) Severn 1994.

   Some odds and ends this time, almost of them dealing with small typographical errors that have been spotted and corrected in Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

COBB, (GEOFFREY) BELTON. 1892-1971. Son of Thomas Cobb, 1835-1932, q.v. Sales director for Longman’s publishers and a regular contributor to Punch and other magazines. His detective novels invariably involved one or more of three series characters: Inspector Cheviot Burmann (41 titles), Bryan Armitage (21 titles) and Superintendent Manning (6 titles), with some overlap. A small handful of stand-alone novels are also included in his entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

DEHAN, RICHARD. Pseudonym of Clothilde (Inez Augusta Mary) Graves, 1863-1932, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of two story collections included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV; some of the stories are criminous.

FORSYTE, CHARLES. Joint pseudonym of Gordon Charles George Philo, 1920-2009, and his wife Mavis Ella (Galsworthy) Philo, 1920-1986, qq.v. Under this pen name, the author of four crime and/or espionage novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, three of them cases for Inspector Richard Left. Of special note is the following book, also in his CFIV entry:
      The Decoding of Edwin Drood. Gollancz, UK, hc, 1980; Scribner, US, hc, 1980. Discussion of previous attempts to complete the novel by Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, with a new ending by this author.

GRAVES, CLOTILDE (INEZ AUGUSTA MARY). 1863-1932. Add name in full (first named sometimes spelled Clothilde). Pseudonym: Richard Dehan, q.v. Born in Cork; actress, journalist, illustrator, poet and playwright. Under her own name, the author of one title included with a dash in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below. Other work, according to one source includes “humorous novels and stories of witchcraft and pagan religions.”
      -Dragon’s Teeth. Dalziel Brothers, UK, hc, 1891. Add setting: China. [A tale of daring adventure, hardship and love in China during a native uprising.]

HAMILTON, [LORD] FREDERIC (SPENSER). 1856-1928. Add biographical information: Was in Diplomatic Service, serving in Berlin, Petrograd, Lisbon and Buenos Aires. Member of Parliament; editor of Pall Mall Magazine. (Some sources say that he introduced the sport of skiing to Canada in 1887.) The author of one standalone novel in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, plus seven story collections involving series character Mr. P. J. Davenant. One of these is shown below (Nash, 1915). According to Lofts & Adley, Philip John Davenant was “a public school boy [whose] adventures took place while he was still a pupil at Tonbridge School […] In addition to an amazing bent to criminology [he had] a wonderful knowledge of the German language.”
      -Lady Eleanor, Private Simmonds, and Others. Hurst, UK, hc, 1919. Correct setting: Ireland.

HARDY, IZA DUFFUS. Ca.1852-1922. The author of “a large output of novels of a romantic cast. She set some of them in exotic places, and also wrote travel books and contributed stories and other pieces to periodicals.” To the thirteen titles previously listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, add the one below.
      Friend and Lover. Hurst, UK, hc, 1880; Harper, US, hc, 1880. Setting: England.

MACKENZIE, JOAN (NOBLE). Correct spelling of last name (from MacKenzie) and add middle name. Add: Born in Dumfries, Scotland, 1905. Included in her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV are five titles published between 1935 and 1951, four of them indicated as having only marginal crime content.

PHILO, GORDON CHARLES GEORGE. 1920-2009. Add year of death and biographical information: British diplomat stationed in Hanoi, Kuala Lampur, Ankara, Istanbul and London; long-time member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. In literary circles, an expert on both Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling. Joint pseudonym with his wife Mavis Ellen Galsworthy Philo, 1920-1986: Charles Forsyte, q.v.

PHILO, MAVIS ELLEN (GALSWORTHY). 1920-1986. Add both dates and full name. Joint pseudonym with husband Gordon Charles George Philo, 1920-2009: Charles Forsyte, q.v.

SCOTT, EVELYN. 1893-1963. Pseudonym: Ernest Souza, q.v. Born in Clarksville, Tennessee; name at birth: Elsie Dunn. She changed her name to Evelyn Scott in 1913 when she began living with Frederick Creighton Wellman, an already married dean at Tulane University. After the mid-20s, she married British writer John Metcalfe. A celebrated novelist, playwright and poet of her day.

SOUZA, ERNEST. Pseudonym of Evelyn Scott, 1893-1963, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of one adventure thriller included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
      Blue Rum. Cape & Smith, US, hc, 1930; Jonathan Cape, UK, hc, 1930. Setting: Portugal, Brazil (add the latter).