Jamie Sturgeon and I saw the same book listed on eBay around the same time, and each of us sent the information hidden in the listing to Al Hubin, author of Crime Fiction IV: A Bibliography (Revised), within a day of each other.

Jamie was one step ahead of me, however, and he’d already been in touch with the seller, who told Jamie how he’d gotten his information about the author of the book, Donald Deane, about whom nothing has been known until now.

It turns out that there never was a “Donald Deane,” and that the three books attributed to him in CFIV were actually written by Mary Fair, a rather progressive lady living in the Eskdale lake district of England, nestled at the foot of that country’s highest mountains.

Following the link from her name to the website devoted to her, you’ll find her life’s accomplishments described in considerable detail. I’ll quote only a summary that was printed in a newspaper about her, shortly after her death:

“Archaeologist, welfare-worker, explorer, geneaolgist, naturalist, photographer, writer and lecturer … this familiar and friendly figure, sometimes half-tramp, sometimes professorial, trudging up the fells in foul or fair weather to deliver orange juice or medicinal oil out of her knapsack to some infant arrival in a remote farmhouse; or, at midnight, popping up disturbingly from behind a beck-side drystone wall, where she had been recording the seasonal note of an unusual owl. … we shall miss more than her erudition: we shall miss her friendly, twinkling eye, her crisp opinions- sometimes inventively ornamented and not infrequently critical- but particularly we shall miss her humanity: her readiness to give a knowledgeable helping hand wherever it was needed.”

Of course it is her connection to the world of crime and detective fiction that is of interest. I’ll add another quote below, if I may. (Sorry. I said only one quote, but I was wrong.)

Oh, and by the way, she wrote detective novels, under the name Donald Deane. She never told anybody, but another of her friends, Whitehaven librarian Daniel Hay, solved the mystery. Published by John Hamilton of London, they were The Fifth Tulip (1930); The Luck of Luce (1931) and Hidden Clues: A Lakeland story (1932). Most of the manuscript for a fourth novel, set in Scotland, also survives, written in cheap exercise books.

Here’s a cover scan of the third of these books, taken from the eBay listing that helped lead to this discovery:

Deane

Another entry, it almost goes without saying, if anyone’s keeping track, in the ongoing list of female mystery writers who kept their identities hidden by using initials in their byines or under the names of men.