Thu 3 Mar 2011
Deaths Noted: EDWARD WELLEN and BARBARA WHITEHEAD.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted[5] Comments
â— Reported first by Jiro Kimura on his Gumshoe website, mystery and SF writer Edward Wellen died on January 15, 2011. Noted primarily for his short fiction, Mr. Wellen wrote two crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and one collection of criminous short stories:
EDWARD (Paul) WELLEN 1919-2011.
Hijack. Beagle, pb, 1971.
An Hour to Kill. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
Perps. Five Star, ss collection, hc, 2001.
Hijack was a science fiction novel with a considerable crime component; the blurb on the front cover says “The Mafia takes to space!” A shorter version was published earlier in Venture SF (May 1970).
A list of Wellen’s short SF can be found here on ISFDB, while some of his short work in the mystery (and western) field can be found here in The FictionMags Index.
The earliest story there is “Enough Rope,” 2-Gun Western, August 1953, which is enough to qualify him as a pulp fiction writer, a category whose number is sadly decreasing every month.
â— The death of author Barbara Whitehead was reported first by UK mystery writer Martin Edwards on his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?
Martin says in part: “Barbara came to crime fiction late after writing historical romances and non-fiction. Her first crime novel, Playing God, had an interesting background of the York mystery plays. It became the opening entry in her “York cycle of mysteries”, which eventually ran to eight titles spanning a decade of publication. Her main character was Detective Superintendent Bob Southwell and she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”
BARBARA (Maude) WHITEHEAD. 1930-2011. Series character Inspector Robert Southwell in all titles:
Playing God (n.) Quartet 1988; St. Martin’s, 1989.
The Girl with Red Suspenders (n.) Constable 1990; St. Martin’s, 1990.
The Dean It Was That Died (n.) Constable 1991; St. Martin’s, 1991.
Sweet Death, Come Softly (n.) Constable 1992; St. Martin’s, 1993.
The Killings at Barley Hall (n.) Constable 1995.
Secrets of the Dead (n.) Constable 1996.
Death at the Dutch House (n.) Constable 1997.
Dolls Don’t Choose (n.) Constable 1998.
The last four books have never been published in the US. For more information about her life and career, her webpage http://www.barbarawhitehead.com/ is still online.
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Sad news. Wellen never failed to entertain. He was a underrated author whose writing was consistently original and brilliant. Although Wellen was prolific in the short story, he never wrote enough to satisfy me. He deserves to be rediscovered.
I have not read any of Barbara Whitehead’s work, but Martin did a good job eulogizing her on his blog. I hope to read some of her books soon.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:00 pm
I’m glad to see that Wellen’s long novella/short novel, GOLDBRICK, was at least once reprinted, if never on its own, in a Greenberg antho.
As I’ve noted on Bill’s and Jerry’s blogs, now, and on my own, Wellen was a brilliant writer of vignettes, one of the best we’ve had. And his longer work was usually impressive, as well. Very sad that when Jerry and I were discussing his work the other day, we weren’t aware of his death less than two weeks before.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:06 pm
GOLDBRICK appears in the Academy Chicago edition of COMPUTER CRIMES AND CAPERS at 76 pp…a bit slim for most books, but certainly longer than most if not all chapbooks, and I don’t know how the typefaces are in that volume (or if the version there was abridged at all)…
But the Wellen omnibus is overdue. eBooks ho.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Todd
I went hunting and I found your original blog post about Edward Wellen and GOLDBRICK. Here’s the link, for anyone else who’d like to go back and read it.
http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2009/11/fridays-forgotten-books-goldbrick-by.html
I’m with you and Jerry. I think a lot more of his work should have been collected long before now. He’s a good example of an excellent writer who never got any notice because he almost never wrote anything longer than a novelette — and a good deal of it consisted only very short vignettes.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:27 pm
And here’s the link to Jerry’s blog, where Edward Wellen came up for discussion.
http://jerryshouseofeverything.blogspot.com/2011/02/forgotten-book-all-about-future.html