 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2010) |
William Leonard Marshall | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1944 Sydney, Australia |
| Died | 2003 |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Genre | Mystery fiction |
| Notable works | Yellowthread Street series |
William Marshall (or William Leonard Marshall) (1944-2003) was an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series. [1]
William Marshall worked as a playwright, journalist, proofreader, and morgue attendant and was a teacher in an Irish prison. He was also the author of several series of police novels set across the globe and in various centuries. Born in Sydney, Australia in 1944, he lived in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Wales, Ireland, and USA, before returning to Australia in 1983 with his wife and daughter. He died in 2003. [2]
In the Yellowthread Street series, the detectives of the Yellowthread Street police station in fictitious Hong Bay, Hong Kong – DCI Harry Feiffer, a European born and raised in Hong Kong; Senior Inspector Christopher O'Yee, half-Chinese, half-Irish American, and all neurotic; and the ever-bickering team of Inspectors Auden and Spencer – attempt to find the rational basis for inexplicable and seemingly bizarre crimes. [3] The Yellowthread novels show the influence of Ed McBain in their overlapping plot-lines, snappy dialogue, world-weary detectives and often difficult civilians. [4]
Marshall's novels manage to juggle violence, suspense, and slapstick humor in his twist on the police procedural form. He has also written two mystery series based in Manila and late-19th-century New York City, the latter featuring City Detective Virgil Tillman – New York City's "first thinking detective" – and his partner, patrolman Ned Muldoon of the Strong Arm Squad.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murders. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the more than thirty novels and several short story collections in which Ellery Queen appeared as a character, and their books were among the most popular of American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. In addition to the fiction featuring their eponymous brilliant amateur detective, the two men acted as editors: as Ellery Queen they edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime, and Dannay founded and for many decades edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961, Dannay and Lee also commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers using the Ellery Queen nom de plume, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; several juvenile novels were credited to Ellery Queen, Jr. Finally, the prolific duo wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross.
Inspector James Japp is a fictional character who appears in several of Agatha Christie's novels featuring Hercule Poirot.
Anthony Grove Hillerman was an American author of detective novels and nonfiction works best known for his mystery novels featuring Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Several of his works have been adapted as theatrical and television movies.
Le ChevalierC. Auguste Dupin[oɡyst dypɛ̃] is a fictional character created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", widely considered the first detective fiction story. He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).
Freeman Wills Crofts FRSA was an Irish mystery author, best remembered for the character of Inspector Joseph French.
Detective Inspector G. Lestrade, or Mr. Lestrade, is a fictional character appearing in several of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Lestrade's first appearance was in the first Sherlock Holmes story, the novel A Study in Scarlet, which was published in 1887. The last story in which he appears is the short story "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", which was first published in 1924 and was included in the last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
Raymond Stanley Lonnen was an English stage and television actor. His most prominent roles include Willie Caine in the ITV cult classic Cold War-era spy drama series, The Sandbaggers (1978–80), and also as Harry Brown in the television miniseries Harry's Game (1982).
Cecil John Charles Street, who was known to his colleagues, family and friends as John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British Army. During the course of World War I, he became a propagandist for MI7, in which role he held the rank of Major. After the armistice, he alternated between Dublin and London during the Irish War of Independence as Information Officer for Dublin Castle, working closely with Lionel Curtis. He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels.
The Doorbell Rang is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1965.
Thomas F. Byrnes was an Irish-born American police officer, who served as head of the New York City Police Department detective department from 1880 until 1895, who popularized the terms "rogues gallery" and "third degree".
In the Best Families is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1950. The story was collected in the omnibus volumes Five of a Kind and Triple Zeck.
Yellowthread Street is a British television police drama, first broadcast in 1990, that focuses on the work of a group of detectives in the Royal Hong Kong Police. Developed and produced by Ranald Graham, the series was loosely based on the novels by William Leonard Marshall. A single season of thirteen episodes was produced by Yorkshire Television and broadcast on ITV from January 13 to April 7, 1990. The series starred Ray Lonnen as principal character Alex Vale, with Bruce Payne, Robert Taylor, Doreen Chan, Tzi Ma, Mark McGann and Catherine Neilson also appearing as detectives in the series.
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 Final Deduction is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1961 and collected in the omnibus volume Three Aces.
Stephen Sartarelli is an American poet and translator.
Nancy Atherton is an American writer and author of the Aunt Dimity mystery novel series, which presently extends to twenty-four volumes.
"Die Like a Dog" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella written by American writer Rex Stout, first published as "The Body in the Hall" in the December 1954 issue of The American Magazine. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection Three Witnesses, published by the Viking Press in 1956.
The Hog's Back Mystery (1933), also known as The Strange Case of Dr. Earle, is a "Golden Age" mystery novel by the Irish author Freeman Wills Crofts. It is the tenth novel in his Inspector French series. The novel is an early example of the police procedural subgenre of detective fiction. It was the first of Croft's books published by Hodder & Stoughton. It was reissued in 2015 by British Library Publishing.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
