Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. Schechter's essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. His newest book, published in March 2021, is Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer.
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975.
A Murder Is Announced is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1950 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in the same month. The UK edition sold for eight shillings and sixpence (8/6) and the US edition at $2.50.
Robert Lawson was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He won the Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in They Were Strong and Good in 1941 and the Newbery award for his short story for Rabbit Hill in 1945.
A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there will usually be a large cast, multiple voices, dialogue, narration, description, and action in a novelistic manner.
Paul Stewart is a writer of children's books, best known for three series written in collaboration with the illustrator Chris Riddell: The Edge Chronicles, the Free Lance novels, and the Far Flung Adventures series.
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL was an English novelist and editor of Scottish extraction, known for a post-modern approach to her fiction, often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. She also published under the pseudonym Catherine Aydy.
Melrose Plant is a fictional character in Martha Grimes' series of Richard Jury mystery novels. Superintendent Richard Jury is a Scotland Yard detective who frequently calls on Plant to assist him, unofficially, in his cases.
Richard Jury is a fictional character in a series of mystery novels written by Martha Grimes.
Murder by the Book is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1951 by the Viking Press, and collected in the omnibus volume Royal Flush (1965).
The White Priory Murders is a mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr (1906–1977), who published it under the name of Carter Dickson. It is a locked room mystery and features his series detective, Sir Henry Merrivale, assisted by Scotland Yard Inspector Humphrey Masters.
23 Paces to Baker Street is a 1956 American DeLuxe Color mystery thriller film directed by Henry Hathaway. It was released by 20th Century Fox and filmed in Cinemascope on location in London. The screenplay by Nigel Balchin was based on the 1938 novel Warrant for X, original UK title The Nursemaid Who Disappeared by Philip MacDonald. The film focuses on Philip Hannon, a blind playwright who overhears a partial conversation he believes is related to the planning of a kidnapping. Hannon searches for the child with the help of his butler and ex-fiancée, using his acute sense of hearing to gather evidence and serve as guidance. The plot of the film is similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window of 1954, which also features a disabled protagonist witnessing a crime whom the police refuse to take seriously, therefore placing him in danger and culminating in a final standoff with the killer in the protagonist's darkened apartment.
Dana Cameron is an American archaeologist, and author of award-winning crime fiction and urban fantasy.
Kathleen Krull was an author of children's books and a former book editor.
Joseph Wechsberg was a Jewish Moravian writer, journalist, musician, and gourmet. Born in Ostrava, in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, he and his wife requested and received asylum in the United States in 1939 when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. His mother was among the Czech Jews interned by the Nazis and later was murdered at Auschwitz. Over his career he was a prolific writer who wrote over two dozen works of nonfiction, including books on music and musicians, and contributed numerous articles to publications such as The New Yorker.
Nancy Atherton is an American writer and author of the Aunt Dimity mystery novel series, which presently extends to twenty-five volumes.
"Counterfeit for Murder" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella by Rex Stout, first serialized as "The Counterfeiter's Knife" in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection Homicide Trinity, published by the Viking Press in 1962.
G. M. Malliet is an American author of mystery novels and short stories. She is best known as the author of the award-winning Detective Chief Inspector St. Just mysteries and the Rev. Max Tudor mysteries. The first book in her US-based series, Augusta Hawke, appeared in 2022.
Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2006.
