Golden Age Detective Stories

‘In addition to well-known contributors, such as Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner, Penzler presents memorable tales from the lesser-known’ * Publishers Weekly *‘Belongs on the shelf of any true mystery fan, and in the collection of every library’s mystery section.’ * Booklist *‘Exemplary.’ * Kirkus *

Otto Penzler (Author)

Otto Penzler owns The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and founded the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books. He has written and edited several books, including the Edgar Award-winning Encyclopaedia of Mystery and Detection, and is the series editor of the annual Best American Mystery Stories of the Year.

Charlotte Armstrong (Contributor)

Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was an Edgar Award-winning American author of mystery short stories and novels. Born and raised in the mining region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she moved to New York and received a B.A. degree from Barnard in 1925. She had two plays produced on Broadway but neither was successful, so she turned to writing mystery fiction, beginning with Lay On, MacDuff (1942), the first of three detective novels featuring Professor MacDougal Duff. Several of her novels were adapted for film, including The Unsuspected, The Chocolate Cobweb, and Mischief.

Anthony Boucher (Contributor)

Anthony Boucher (1911-1968) was an American author, editor, and critic, perhaps best known today as the namesake of the annual Bouchercon convention, an international meeting of mystery writers, fans, critics, and publishers. Born William Anthony Parker White, he wrote under various pseudonyms and published fiction in a number of genres outside of mystery, including fantasy and science fiction.

Mignon G. Eberhart (Contributor)

Mignon G. Eberhart (1899–1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over nearly sixty years. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she published her first novel, The Patient in Room 18, in 1929 and by the end of the 1930s she was one of the most popular mystery writers on the planet. Eight of her books—including Murder by an Aristocrat—were adapted for film; later in her career, she was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America for lifetime achievement.

Erle Stanley Gardner (Contributor)

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was a prolific American author best known for his works centered on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason. At the time of his death in March of 1970, in Ventura, California, Gardner was “the most widely read of all American writers” and “the most widely translated author in the world,” according to social historian Russell Nye. The first Perry Mason novel, The Case of The Velvet Claws, published in 1933, had sold twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. In the mid-1950s, the Perry Mason novels were selling at the rate of twenty thousand copies a day. There have been six motion pictures based on his work and the hugely popular Perry Mason television series starring Raymond Burr, which aired for nine years and 271 episodes.

H. F. Heard (Contributor)

The English social historian and author of science and mystery fiction Henry Fitzgerald Heard (1889–1971) was born in London, studied at Cambridge University, then turned to writing essays and books on historical, scientific, religious, mystical, cultural, and social subjects, signing them Gerald Heard, the name under which all his non-fiction appeared. He moved to the United States in 1937, accompanied by his friend Aldous Huxley, and soon afterwards founded a college to teach meditation and other spiritual practices. Heard wrote three detective novels featuring the character Mr Mycroft: A Taste for Honey (1941), Reply Paid (1942), and The Notched Hairpin (1949). Among Heard’s other science fiction and mystery novels, perhaps his best-known work is the short story “The President of the U. S. A., Detective,” which won the first prize in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s contest in 1947.

Baynard Kendrick (Contributor)

Baynard Kendrick (1894–1977) was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, later named a Grand Master by the organization. After returning from military service in World War I, Kendrick wrote for pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective under various pseudonyms before creating the Duncan Maclain character for which he is now known. The blind detective appeared in twelve novels, several short stories, and three films.

Frances Lockridge (Contributor)

Frances and Richard Lockridge were two of the most popular names in mystery during the forties and fifties. Inspired by Richard’s series of non-mystery stories for The New Yorker about a publisher and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. North, the Lockridge husband-and-wife duo collaborated successfully to write twenty-six mystery novels about the couple, which, in turn, became the subject of a Broadway play, a movie (starring Gracie Allen), and series for both radio and television. After Frances’s death in 1963, Richard discontinued the Mr. and Mrs. North series but continued to write until his own death in 1982.

Richard Lockridge (Contributor)

Frances and Richard Lockridge were two of the most popular names in mystery during the forties and fifties. Inspired by Richard’s series of non-mystery stories for The New Yorker about a publisher and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. North, the Lockridge husband-and-wife duo collaborated successfully to write twenty-six mystery novels about the couple, which, in turn, became the subject of a Broadway play, a movie (starring Gracie Allen), and series for both radio and television. After Frances’s death in 1963, Richard discontinued the Mr. and Mrs. North series but continued to write until his own death in 1982.

Stuart Palmer (Contributor)

Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs - including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting - before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.

Ellery Queen (Contributor)

Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing the greatest puzzle-mysteries of their time, gaining the duo a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age “fair play” mystery. Eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first appearance came in 1928 when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Besides co-writing the Queen novels, Dannay founded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired the fictional Queen upon Lee’s death.

Patrick Quentin (Contributor)

Patrick Quentin is one of the pseudonyms of Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), who collaborated with several other authors on the books written as by Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Wheeler was born in London but moved to the United States in 1934 and became a U.S. citizen, as did one of his writing partners, Richard Wilson Webb; he also collaborated with Martha (Patsy) Mott Kelly. After producing more than 30 mystery novels, Wheeler gravitated to the stage and wrote the book for A Little Night Music, Candide, and Sweeney Todd, all of which earned him Tony awards. Two Peter Duluth novels inspired films: Homicide for Three (1948) and Black Widow (1954), which starred Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, Ginger Rogers and George Raft.

Clayton Rawson (Contributor)

Clayton Rawson (1906–1971) was a novelist, editor, and magician. He is best known for creating the Great Merlini, an illusionist and amateur sleuth introduced in Death from a Top Hat (1938). Rawson followed the character through three more novels, concluding the series with No Coffin for the Corpse (1942). In 1941 and 1943 he published the short-story collections Death out of Thin Air and Death from Nowhere, starring Don Diavolo, an escape artist introduced in the Merlini series.

Craig Rice (Contributor)

Craig Rice (1908–1957), born Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, was an American author of mystery novels and short stories. In 1946, she became the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Best known for her character John J. Malone, a rumpled Chicago lawyer, Rice’s writing style was unique in its ability to mix gritty, hard-boiled writing with the entertainment of a screwball comedy. She also collaborated with mystery writer Stuart Palmer on screenplays and short stories, and ghost-wrote several titles published under the by-line of actor George Sanders.

Mary Roberts Rinehart (Contributor)

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was the most beloved and best-selling mystery writer in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pittsburgh to the owner of a sewing machine factory, she wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was a regular on bestseller lists. Among her dozens of novels were The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) and The Bat (1932), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Today, Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she was much more popular than Christie during her heyday.

Cornell Woolrich (Contributor)

Cornell Woolrich (1903-68) was one of the most admired and influential of all 20th century American crime writers. His work inspired many films, including most famously Rear Window, The Leopard Man, Phantom Lady, The Bride Wore Black, Mississippi Mermaid and Union City. He led a strange and often very unhappy life, latterly as a recluse in a Manhattan hotel.