While technically speaking this blog is still on its August break, the garage is far too hot for me to spend as much time as I should be in getting it organized and “cleaned out.” So I’m doing what I can do inside instead, and that includes working on the Addenda for the Revised edition of Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.

   At the moment I’m working on the S’s in Part 3. The following caught my eye a couple of evenings ago, and as a result I spent some time making sure that I had all of the relationships identified and untangled for the four authors who were:

STRANGE, MARK. Joint pseudonym of Adrian Leslie Stephen, Karin Costelloe Stephen, Marjorie Colville Strachey, & Rachel Costelloe Strachey, q.q.v. Under this pen name, the author of one novel in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV; see below:
         Midnight. Faber, hc, 1927. [Academia; England]

   Taking the co-authors one at a time, in alphabetical order:

STEPHEN, ADRIAN LESLIE. 1883-1948. Add both dates. Noted psychoanalyst; brother of author Virginia Woolf. Both were members of the Bloomsbury group. Married to Karin Costelloe Stephen, also a physician and psychiatrist. Joint pseudonym with Marjorie Colville Strachey, Rachel Costelloe Strachey & Karin Costelloe Stephen, qq.v.: Mark Strange, q.v.

STEPHEN, KARIN COSTELLOE. 1889-1953. Add both dates. A physician and psychiatrist; married to Adrian Leslie Stephen. Sister of Rachel Costelloe Strachey. Joint pseudonym with Adrian Leslie Stephen, Marjorie Colville Strachey, & Rachel Costelloe Strachey, qq.v.: Mark Strange, q.v.

STRACHEY, MARJORIE COLVILLE. 1882–1964. Add both dates. Sister of British writer & critic Lytton Strachey. Joint pseudonym with Adrian Leslie Stephen, Karen Costelloe Stephen & Rachel Costelloe Strachey, qq.v. : Mark Strange, q.v.

STRACHEY, RACHEL [“RAY”] (PEARSALL CONN), née COSTELLOE. 1887-1940. Add full name. Studied mathematics and electrical engineering before becoming actively involved with the British women’s suffrage movement. Sister of Karen Costelloe Stephen; married Oliver Strachey, a mathematician and cryptographer in the Foreign Office, and brother of Lytton Strachey. Joint pseudonym with Adrian Leslie Stephen, Karen Costelloe Stephen & Marjorie Colville Strachey, qq.v. : Mark Strange, q.v.

   If you’re interested in learning more about these jointly related and collaborating authors, the links will get you started, and Google will lead you to more. It has occurred to me to wonder what sort of book they might have written. Was it a spoof of the British thriller novel, with academic overtones, or did they take their story and plot completely seriously?

   I can’t answer the question, nor can I provide a color image of the cover. Not a single copy is offered for sale on the Internet; in fact, other than the CFIV page, there’s no mention of the book at all.

   For now, it’s yet another mystery.

[UPDATE] 08-20-07. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon, some information on the book has come to light. Check out this later blog entry.