last post

Due to lack of interest from kindle folks, I'm closing down this blog. I'll remove it from the Kindle on Jan 2.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Regular blog postings begin on DECEMBER 26, Monday.

16 December: This Day in Mystery

The second Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey opens in the United States.

25 November: This Day in Mystery

25 November 1899
W.R. Burnett is born in Springfield, Ohio.

Burnett is the author of Little Caesar (1929), High Sierra (1940), and The Asphalt Jungle (1949).

25 November 1947
Out of the Past, the "definitive existential noir film" starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas is released.

25 November 1952
Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassador Theatre in London, with Richard Attenborough and Shela Sim. The Mousetrap is still running today!

24 November: This Day in Mystery

24 November 1908
Harry Kemelman, whose detective hero Rabbi David Small is acclaimed the best clerical sleuth since Father Brown, is born in Boston. Small assists police chief Hugh Lanagan in solving crimes that happen on a daily basis: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red (1974).

24 November 1925
William F. Buckley Jr is born in New York City. Famed conservative commentator and editor of The National Review, Buckley also writes best-selling thrillers featuring Blackford Oakes, a Yale-educated CIA agent (Saving the Queen, 1976).

23 November: This Day in Mystery

23 November 1887
Boris Karloff, christened William Henry Pratt, is born in Dulwich, England. Karloff, an ex-truckdriver, receives his first good reviews for his roles as crimonals in such early talkie crime melodramas as The Criminal Code (1931) before going on to become one of Hollywood's best-known actors after his performance as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, 1931.

23 November 1910
Wife murderer Dr. H. H. Crippen is executed at Pentonville prison in England.

22 November: This Day in Mystery

22 November 1917
John Cleary is born in Sydney, Australia. He becomes a writer of suspense novels, and will win the 1974 Edgar for best novel for Peter's Pence, "an exciting heist yarn set in the Vatican." In it the Pope is kidnapped by a group of IRA extremists and ransomed for 15 million Deutsche marks.

21 November: This Day in Mystery

According to The Mystery Book of Days - Mysterious Press,, 1990, nothing mysterious at all happened on this day.

20 November: This Day in Mystery

20 November 1900
Chester Gould is born in Pawnee, Oklahoma. He will grow up to create Dick Tracy, in 1931. Gould figures that if real-life policemen couldn't put a stop to gangsters and bootleggers, he would create one that could. Gould's villains include Pruneface, BB Eyes, Flattop and Mumbles.

20 November 1926
British espionage novelist John Gardner (who writes James Bond novels after the death of Ian Fleming, as for example License Renewed in 1981), is born in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, England. His The Garden of Weapons (1980) represents a more serious side of the author.

19 November: This Day in Mystery

According to the Mystery Book of Days, The Mysterious Press, 1990, nothing at all mysterious happened on this day.

18 November: This Day in Mystery

According to the Mystery Book of Days, The Mysterious Press, 1990, nothing at all mysterious happened on this day.

13 November: This Day in Mystery

13 November 1850
Robert Louis Stevenson is born in Edinburgh. He is the author of Treasure Island (1883) Kidnapped (1886), as well as crime books The Wrong Box (1889) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).

13 November 1877
Harvey J. O'Higgins is born on this date in London, Ontario. The first serious use of psychoanalytical deduction occurs in the works of Harvey J. O'Higgins, who is the author of Detective Duff Unravels It (1929).

13 November 1904
Vera Caspary, the author of Laura (1943), her first novel, is born in Chicago. (Otto Preminger's 1944 film classic stars Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price and Judith Anderson)

Vera Caspary (November 13, 1899 – June 13, 1987) was an American writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and short stories. Her best-known novel Laura was made into a highly successful movie. Though she claimed she was not a "real" mystery writer, her novels effectively merged women's quest for identity and love with murder plots. Independence is the key to her protagonists, with her novels revolving around women who are menaced, but who turn out to be neither victimized nor rescued damsels.

Following her father's death, the income from Caspary's writing was at times only just sufficient to support both herself and her mother, and during the Great Depression she became interested in Socialist causes. Caspary joined the Communist party under an alias, but not being totally committed and at odds with its code of secrecy, she claimed to have confined her activities to fund-raising and hosting meetings.

Caspary visited Russia in an attempt to confirm her beliefs, but nonetheless became disillusioned and wished to resign from the Party, although she continued to contribute money and support similar causes. She eventually married her lover and writing collaborator of six years, Isidor "Igee" Goldsmith; but despite this being a successful partnership, her Communist connections would later lead to her being "graylisted", temporarily yet significantly affecting their offers of work and income.

The couple split their time between Hollywood and Europe until Igee's death in 1964, after which Caspary remained in New York where she would write a further eight books.

* A Manual of Classic Dancing. (as Sergei Marinoff) Chicago: Sergei Marinoff School, 1922
* Ladies and Gents. NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1929
* The White Girl. NY: Sears & Company, 1929
* Music in the street. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930
* Thicker than Water. NY: Liveright, 1932
* Laura. Boston Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943
* Bedelia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945
* Stranger Than Truth. NY: Random House, 1946
* The Murder in the Stork Club. NY: AC. Black, 1946
* The Weeping And The Laughter. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1950
* Thelma. Boston: Little Brown, 1952
* False Face. London: W.H Allen, 1954
* Evvie. NY: Harper, 1960
* Bachelor in Paradise. NY: Dell, 1961
* A Chosen Sparrow. NY: Putnam, 1964
* The Man Who Loved His Wife. NY: Putnam, 1966
* The Husband. NY: Harpers, 1967
* The Rosecrest Cell. NY: Putnam, 1967
* Final Portrait. London: W.H. Allen, 1971
* Ruth. NY: Pocket, 1972
* Dreamers. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1975
* Elizabeth X. London: WH Allen, 1978
* The Secrets of Grown-Ups. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1979
* The Murder in the Stork Club and Other Mysteries. Norfolk, VA: Crippen & Landru, 2009. Collection of novelettes.

12 November: This Day in Mystery

12 November 1939
Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, dramatized by The Mercury Players (founded by Orson Welles), is broadcast on CBS' radio's Campbell Playhouse.

12 November 1947
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy - creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Old Man in the Corner and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, dies at the age o82.

11 November: This Day in Mystery

11 November 1846
Anna Katherine Green, often erroneously considered to be the first female mystery author, is born in Brooklym. Her The Leavenworth Case (1878) appears eleven years after the lesser known Dead Letter by Seeley Register.

11 November 1914
Howard Fast is born in New York City. A mainstream novelist, Fast uses the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham for his mysteries after being blacklisted during the McCArthy era. He is best known for his novels featuring Masao Masuto, a Japanese Buddhist and martial arts expert who moves among California's rich and powerful investigating various crimes (The Case of the Russian Diplomat (1978)).

10 November: This Day in Mystery

10 November 1893
John P. Marquand, creator of secret agent Mr. I. O. Moto, is born in Wilmington, Delaware. The character is popular in a series of eight movies starring Peter Lorre, but fades away after Pearl Harbor.

10 November 1932
Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang starring Paul Muni as a man forced by the Depression to take up a life of crime, is released.

9 November: This Day in Mystery

9 November 1955
I Died A Thousand Times, the second film version of W.R. Burnett's High Sierra - this time starring Jack Palance as Mad Dog Earle - is released.

9 November 1965
The great New York electrical blackout strikes. This occurrence becomes the basis for Stanton Forbes' thriller Dead By the Light of the Moon (1967).

8 November: This Day in Mystery

8 November 1943
Jon L. Breen is born in Montgomery, Alabama. He is an Edgar-winning critic and novelist, who satirizes the work of Christie, Queen, Van Dine, Carr and others in a collection of parodies of the great detectives, Hair of the Sleuthhound (1982). His novels showcase his affection for old books and classic mystery plotting (Touch of the Past, 1988).

7 November: This Day in Mystery

7 November, 1942
Johnny Rivers, composer and singer of Secret Agent Man - which will be used as the theme for the British TV series Danger Man (in the US) is born on this day.



7 November 1980
Steve McQueen, star in a variety of movie genres, but also in The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt, dies on this day from a heart attack following surgery for mesothelioma. He was only 50 years old, having been born on 25 March 1930.

6 November: This Day in Mystery

6 November 1951
The film version of Detective Story, directed by William Wyler from the hit Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley, premieres. Kirk Douglas plays the amoral and sadistic cop, Jim McLeod. Dashiell Hammett is originally hired to write the screenplay, but later drops out of the project.

Detective Story (1951) is a film noir which tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. It features Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell, Lee Grant, among others. The movie was adapted by Robert Wyler and Philip Yordan from the 1949 play of the same name by Sidney Kingsley. It was directed by William Wyler.

An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod (Douglas), leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. Little does he realize that his obsessive pursuit of an abortionist (Macready) is leading him to discover his wife had an abortion. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.

5 November: This Day in Mystery

5 November 1925
Sidney Reilly - the British espionage agent known as the Ace of Spies - is executed by the Soviets on this day.

Froom Wikipedia.com
Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly, MC (c. March 24, 1873/1874 – November 5, 1925), famously known as the Ace of Spies, was a Jewish Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard, the British Secret Service Bureau and later the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). He is alleged to have spied for at least four nations. His notoriety during the 1920s was created in part by his friend, British diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, who sensationalised their thwarted operation to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918.

After Reilly's death, the London Evening Standard published in May, 1931, a Master Spy serial glorifying his exploits. Later, Ian Fleming would use Reilly as a model for James Bond. Today, many historians consider Reilly to be the first 20th century super-spy. Much of what is thought to be known about him could be false, as Reilly was a master of deception, and most of his life is shrouded in legend

Death
In September 1925, undercover agents of the OGPU, the intelligence successor of the Cheka, lured Reilly to Bolshevik Russia, ostensibly to meet the supposed anti-Communist organization The Trust—in reality, an OGPU deception existing under the code name Operation Trust. At the Russian border, Reilly was introduced to undercover OGPU agents posing as senior Trust representatives from Moscow. One of these undercover Soviet agents, Alexander Yakushev, later recalled the meeting:
“The first impression of [Sidney Reilly] is unpleasant. His dark eyes expressed something biting and cruel; his lower lip drooped deeply and was too slick—the neat black hair, the demonstratively elegant suit. [...] Everything in his manner expressed something haughtily indifferent to his surroundings.”

After Reilly crossed the Finnish border, the Soviets captured, transported, and interrogated him at Lubyanka Prison. On arrival, Reilly was taken to the office of Roman Pilar, a Soviet official who the previous year had arrested and ordered the execution of Boris Savinkov, a close friend of Reilly. Pilar reminded Reilly that he had been sentenced to death by a 1918 Soviet tribunal for his participation in a counter-revolutionary plot against the Bolshevik government. While Reilly was being interrogated, the Soviets publicly claimed that he had been shot trying to cross the Finnish border.

Historians debate whether Reilly was tortured while in OGPU custody. Cook contends that Reilly was not tortured other than psychologically by mock execution scenarios designed to shake the resolve of prisoners. During OGPU interrogation, Reilly maintained his charade of being a British subject born in Clonmel, Ireland, and would not reveal any intelligence matters.[6] While facing such daily interrogation, Reilly kept a diary in his cell of tiny handwritten notes on cigarette papers which he hid in the plasterwork of a cell wall. While his Soviet captors were interrogating Reilly, Reilly in turn was analysing and documenting their techniques. The diary was a detailed record of OGPU interrogation techniques, and Reilly was understandably confident that such unique documentation would, if he escaped, be of interest to the British SIS. After Reilly's death, Soviet guards discovered the diary in Reilly's cell, and photographic enhancements were made by OGPU technicians.

Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow on November 5, 1925; British intelligence documents released in 2000 confirm this. According to eyewitness Boris Gudz, the execution of Sidney Reilly was supervised by an OGPU officer, Grigory Feduleev; another OGPU officer, George Syroezhkin, fired the final shot into Reilly's chest.

After the death of Reilly, there were various rumors about his survival. Some, for example, speculated that Reilly had defected and became an adviser to Soviet intelligence.

4 November: This Day in Mystery

4 November, 1862
Eden Phillpotts, whose encouragement of the young Agatha Christie helped her development, is born in Mount Aboo, India.

He will write over 100 novels, among them several mysteries.

4 November 1949
Noir master Nicholas Rey's first film, They Live By Night, is released. It is the first film version of Edward Anderson's Thieves Like Us, which will later be remade by detective Robert Altman.

3 November: This Day in Mystery

3 November 1890
Harry Stephen Keeler, inventor of the self-described "webwork" novel, is born in Chicago. To write his monumentally convoluted crime epics, Keeler refers to his boxes of randomly clipped newspaper articles and works there disparate events into his bizarre plots - ultimately resolving every ridiculous complication to make perfect sense (The Face of the Man From Saturn (1933), The Man with the Magic Eardrums (1939).

2 November: This Day in Mystery

2 November 1942
Stefanie Powers, co-star of Hart to Hart, with Robert Wagner, about a husband and wife private detective team, was born o this day.


2 November 1971
Martha Vickers, who co-starred in The Falcon in Mexico (as Barbara MacVicar), and was the second woman in The Big Sleep (along with Lauren Bacall), dies on this day of cancer. She was born on 28 May, 1925

1 November: This Day in Mystery

1 November 1863
Arthur Morrison is born in London. A dramatist and short story writer most interested in social reform, he creates Martin Hewitt. Like Sherlock Holmes, Martin Hewitt first appears in the Strand magazine. His stories are collected together in Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894).

1 November 1899
The real-life inspiration for Bulldog Drummond, Gerald Fairlie, is born in London. Upon the death of Sapper, Drummond's creator, in 1937, Fairlie continues to write the Bulldog Drummond stories (Calling Bulldog Drummond (951)).

31 October: This Day in Mystery

31 October 1920
Dick Francis was born on this day in Tenby, South Wales. After a successful career as a steeplechase jockey, he retired and began to write, first as a newspaperman and then as a crime novelist. Author of such books as Whip Hand (1980) and Forfeit (1969).

31 October 1926
HRF Keating is born in St. Leonards -on-Sea, Sussex, England. Critic and novelist, Keating writes mysteries featuring Indian detective Inspector Ganesh Ghote of Bombay - an often bumbling policeman who nevertheless always gets his man. (The Perfect Murder (1965), Dead on Time (1989))

31 October 1944
Kinky Friedman is born "somewhere in Texas Hill country." He is a country-western singer, songwriter and bandleader turned mystery writer. He writes of his old haunts in the bars and clubs of Greenwich Village, telling of his fictional adventures in which he, along with his fictional companion Ratso, must act as detectives. Greenwich Killing Time (1986) Case of the Lonesome Star (1987).

30 October: This Day in Mystery

According to The Mystery Book of Days (1990, Mysterious Press) nothing mysterious has ever happened on this day.

29 October: This Day in Mystery

29 October 1906
Fredric Brown is born in Cincinnati, Ohio. A writer of mostly science fiction short stories, his mystery novels include The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947) and The Night of the Jabberwock (1950).

29 October 1964
Jack Murphy (Murph the Surf) and two of his beach bum cohorts break into the New York Museum of Natural History and steal the Star of India, the world's largest star sapphire. After their arrest, Murphy claims that he perfected the heist by watching Jules Dassin's classic caper film, Topkapi.

Robbery
He was involved with a robbery on October 29, 1964, of the Star of India along with several other precious gems, including the Eagle Diamond and the de Long Ruby. This robbery was called the "Jewel Heist of the Century." It targeted the J.P. Morgan jewel collection from the display cases of New York's American Museum of Natural History.

Murphy had cased the museum earlier and discovered from a 17-year-old visitor that security was lax to non-existent. The burglar alarm system was non-operational, and a second story window in the jewel room was usually left open to aid in ventilation. The thieves climbed in through the window and discovered that the display case alarms were non-functional as well. The stolen jewels were valued at more than $400,000.

Murphy and both his accomplices, Alan Kuhn and Roger Clark, were arrested two days later and received three-year sentences. The uninsured Star of India was recovered in a foot locker at a Miami bus station. Most of the other gems were also recovered, except the Eagle Diamond, which has since been hypothesized to have been cut down into smaller stones. Richard Duncan Pearson was also convicted.

The heist was the subject of a 1975 movie, directed by Marvin Chomsky, called Murph the Surf. The movie starred Robert Conrad, Burt Young, and Don Stroud (as Murphy).

Murder
In 1968, he was convicted of first-degree murder of Terry Rae Frank, 24, a California secretary, one of two women whose bodies were found in Whiskey Creek near Hollywood, Florida, in 1967. He also was convicted of trying to rob a Miami Beach woman in 1968. He was sentenced to life in prison in Florida.


Post Prison
When Bill Glass, Roger Staubach and McCoy McLemore visited Florida State prison in 1974, as part of a Bill Glass Champions for Life weekend, Murphy was impressed with the visitors, both world champion athletes and local businessmen. At that time Murphy had an earliest parole date of Nov. 2225, but that weekend changed his attitude and he devoted his future time spent in prison to serving a higher cause. His service in the chaplaincy program, leading Bible studies and mentoring other men in prison led the Florida Parole Board to release him on "parole with lifetime monitoring" in 1986.

In 1986, Murphy began going back into prisons and jails all over the U.S. as a platform guest with Bill Glass. In 1990, he was hired on staff with Bill Glass Champions for Life. Murphy has also been a featured speaker for Kairos, Coalition of Prison Evangelists, Int'l Prison Ministries, Time for Freedom and Good News Jail & Prison Ministry. After visiting over 1,200 prisons, and recognizing the incredible change apparent in this man's life, the FL Parole Board terminated his "lifetime parole" in 2000.

Murphy is now international director for Champions for Life, visiting prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities all over the world. Murphy authored a book of his experience and testimony Jewels for the Journey.

28 October: This Day in Mystery

28 October 1945
Simon Brett is born in Worcester Park, Surrey, England. He is the author of the Charles Paris mystery series, as well as the Mrs. Pargeter series and the Fethering series. He also writes and produces a variety of radio series.

Charles Paris
Charles Paris is an unhappily separated (but not divorced more than 30 years on), moderately successful actor with a slight drinking problem who gets entangled in all sorts of crimes, and finds himself in the role of unwilling amateur detective. There are 17 novels featuring this character:

* Cast, In Order of Disappearance (1975)
* So Much Blood (1976)
* Star Trap (1977)
* An Amateur Corpse (1978)
* A Comedian Dies (1979)
* The Dead Side of the Mike (1980)
* Situation Tragedy (1981)
* Murder Unprompted (1982)
* Murder in the Title (1983)
* Not Dead, Only Resting (1984)
* Dead Giveaway (1985)
* What Bloody Man Is That? (1987)
* A Series of Murders (1989)
* Corporate Bodies (1991)
* A Reconstructed Corpse (1993)
* Sicken and So Die (1995)
* Dead Room Farce (1998)

27 October: This Day in Mystery

27 October 1906
Elizabeth Lemarchand is born in Barnstaple, Devonshire, England. She writes "a nostalgic series of ...genteel mysteries featuring Scotland Yard detectives Tom, Pollard and Gregory Toye (Light Through Glass (1984)).

26 October: This Day in Mystery

26 October 1886
Vincent Starrett is born in Toronto, Canada. He is a distinguished scholar who specializes in detective fiction - Sherlock Holmes in particular - and writes The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933). He also writes The Unique Hamlet (1920), considered by many to be the best Sherlockian pastiche, in which Holmes searches for the ultimate rare book, an inscribed first edition of Hamlet. His autobiography is Born in a Bookshop (1965).

25 October: This Day in Mystery

25 October 1957
Mob hit man Albert "the Executioner" Anastasia sits down for a haircut at the Park Sheraton Hotel barbershop in New York City. Two men, their face hidden by scarves, come up behind him and shoot him five times, killing him instantly. The killers are believed to be "Crazy Joey" Gallo and his brother.

24 October:: This Day in Mystery

24 October 1917
Ted Allbeury, the real-life inspiration for Len Deighton's espionage hero Harry Palmer, is born in Stockport, Cheshire, England. A lieutenant colonel in British Intelligence during World War II, he also wrote his own spy novels, The Other Side of Silence (1981); The Judas Factor (1984).


John Frankenheimer's film version of the Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury is released. A Cold War thriller of mind control and assassination, the film is taken out of circulation after President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.

23 October: This Day in Mystery

23 October 1906
Jonathan Latimer is born in Chicago. A screenwriter, he will write the screenplays for Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1942), Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock (1948) and Cornell Woolrich's The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948). He is also the author of the hard-boiled novel Solomon's Vineyard (1941).


23 October 1942
Scientist and science fiction writer Michael Crichton is born in Chicago. He is the author of The Great Train Robbery (1975), the 1968 mystery A Case of Need (under the pseudonym Jeffrey Hudson), and such books as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park.

22 October: This Day in Mystery

22 October 1866
Playboy and mystery writer E. Phillips Oppenheim is born in London. Called "the Prince of Storytellers," he writes 116 novels and 39 short story collections, only The Great Impersonation (1920) is still widely read today.


Steve Cochran and Mamie Van Doren in The Beat Generation22 October 1959
The Beat Generation, a B movie starring Mamie Van Doren, is released. It is the story of two cops in pursuit of a robber known as the Aspirin Kid, and exploits the then-popularity of bebop, beards, bongos and bad poetry.

21 October: This Day in Mystery

21 October 1926
Roderic Jeffries, son of mystery writer Bruce Graeme [Jeffries], is born in London. Jeffries continues his father's series about the adventures of Blackshirt, the safecracker with a heart of gold.

20 October: This Day in Mystery

20 October 1905
Frederic Dannay is born in Brooklyn. With his cousin Manfred B. Lee, he creates private detective Ellery Queen. The character first appears in books. In 1941, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine makes its debut.



20 October 1930
Sherlock Holmes first comes to American radio, making his debut on NBC with stage actor William Gillette in the title role. The sponsor is George Washington Coffee.

19 October: This Day In Mystery

19 October 1931
David Cornwell is born in Pool, Dorsetshire, England. Under the pseudonym John LeCarre, he is the author of espionage novels - the antithesis of the James Bond books, featuring George Smiley as a world-weary civil servant, in such books as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) and The Russia House (1989).

19 October 1942
Andrew Vachs is born in New York City. A criminal lawyer specializing in child protection cases, he writes novels featuring Burke, an ex-con whose knowledge of crime makes him an extremely unorthodox private eye. (Flood, 1985, Hard Candy, 1989.)

18 October: This Day in Mystery

Bartlett Robinson

18 October 1943
Perry Mason begins its radio life on the CBS network in a script prepared especially for radio by Erle Stanley Gardner (Mason's creator). Bartlett Robinson plays Mason in the beginning episodes, shortly to be replaced by Donald Briggs, who will be eventually replaced by Santos Ortega. (Ortega will also play the radio version of Nero Wolfe).

17 October: This Day in Mystery

17 October 1893
Richard Connell is born in Poughkeepsie, New York. A prolific writer, his most famous story is "The Most Dangerous Game" - the classic suspense story of the Russian aristocrat who hunts human prey.

16 October: This Day in Mystery

16 October 1888
The most apparently genuine of all Jack the Ripper's mocking letters is received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. The note is accompanied by a small package containing half a human kidney.

16 October 1944
Brett Halliday's private eye Michael Shayne debuts on the US west coast's Don Lee radio network. Starring Wally Maher in the title role, it goes national by 1946.

15 October: This Day in Mystery

15 October 1880
Arthur B. Reeve is born in Patchogue, New York. He will be the first American mystery writer to make it big in the UK, with the tales of his scientific detective, Craig Kennedy. (The Silent Bullet (1912)

15 October 1917
Exotic dancer and espionage agent [reputed] Mata Hari (real name Marguerite Zelle) is executed by a French firing squad.

15 October 1926
Evan Hunter is born in New York City. Under the pseudonym Ed McBain, he writes police procedurals featuring the 87th Precinct. (Cop Hater, 1956, Vespers 1990). Under his own name, he is the author of The Blackboard Jungle (1954). He is awarded the Grand Master title by the Mystery Writers of America in 1986.

14 October: This Day in Mystery

14 October 1912
New York City saloon owner John Schrank shoots former president Theodore Roosevelt at a Milwaukee political rally. The bullet is stopped by the papers on which Roosevelt has written his speech and which he carried in his breast pocket. He delivers the speech before going to the hospital. He survives the attack but the bullet remains in his body until the day he dies.

14 October 1928
Roger Moore is born in London. He will play Simon Templar, the Saint, in the TV series that runs in the 1960s. In 1973 he makes his first James Bond movie, Live and Let Die.

13 October: This Day in Mystery

13 October 1867
Guy Boothby is born in Adelaide, Australia. He is the creator of the hypnotically gifted Dr. Nikola, a ruthless and unscrupulous evil genius of fin de siecle (end of the century, 1890s) times (The Lust of Hate 1898).

His 1897 book The Prince of Swindlers features Simon Carne, one of the first gentlemen crooks-preceding Raffles by two years.
(Read more at: InternationalHero.com)

12 October: This Day in Mystery

12 October 1904
Lester Dent is born in La Plata, Missouri. Using the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, he creates Doc Savage, the "Man of Bronze" in 1935. Doc Savage's popularity in the pulps is second only to that of The Shadow (although he will never achieve radio success.)

12 October 1939
Soldier, bartender, roughneck and finally mystery writer James Crumley is born in Three Rivers, Texas. He sets his novels in the American West. His private eye heroes Sughrue (The Last Good Kiss 1978) and Milodragovitch (Dancing Bear (1983) wrestle with their obsessions and addictions in these hardboiled novels.

11 October: This Day in Mystery

According to The Mystery Book of Days, (Mysterious Press, 1990), not a single mysterious thing happened on this day.

10 October: This Day in Mystery

According to The Mystery Book of Days, (Mysterious Press, 1990), not a single mysterious thing happened on this day.

9 October: This Day in Mystery

9 October 1900
British character actor Alistair Sim is born in Edinburgh. He will portray Christianna Brand's sardonic detective Inspector Cockrill in the 1946 film Green For Danger.

9 October 1918
E. Howard Hunt is born in Hamburg, New York. He writes a long running series of macho adventure novels, but is also a spy - and participated in the Bay of Pigs. He was also the head Watergate "plumber."

9 October 1939
James McClure is born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He writes a long-running series about White Afrikaaner policeman Kramer and black Bantu policeman Zondi, which examines the racial apartheid system as well as murder mysteries. (The Steam Pig, 1971, The Artful egg, 1984).

8 October: This Day in Mystery

8 October 1850
M. McDonnell Bodkin is born in Dublin.

Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (8 October 1850 – 7 June 1933) was an Irish nationalist politician and MP. in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Anti-Parnellite representative for North Roscommon, 1892–95, a noted author, journalist and newspaper editor, and barrister, King’s Counsel (K.C.) and County Court Judge for County Clare, 1907-24.

Bodkin was a prolific author, in a wide range of genres, including history, novels (contemporary and historical), plays, and political campaigning texts.

Bodkin earned a place in the history of the detective novel by virtue of his invention of the first detective family. His character Paul Beck, a private detective with comfortable lodgings in Chester, was an Irish Sherlock Holmes with a very original yet logical method for detecting crime. Beck first appeared in Paul Beck, the Rule of Thumb Detective in 1899. In the following year Bodkin’s creation Dora Myrl, the lady detective, made her first appearance. In The Capture of Paul Beck (1909), Bodkin had them marry each other and in 1911 their son appeared, in Paul Beck, a chip off the old block. Other titles in this series were The Quests of Paul Beck (1908), Pigeon Blood Rubies (1915) and Paul Beck, Detective (1929).

7 October: This Day in Mystery

7 October 1907
Espionage novelist Helen MacInnes is born in Glasgow, Scotland. Hers works often feature international backdrops, romance, and intrigue. (Above Suspicion, 1941; The Salzburg Connection, 1968).

7 October 1954
Suddenly, a taut, suspenseful thriller starring Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden, is released. Sinatra is a vicious and sadistic assassin who holds a family hostage. (Suddenly is the name of the town where the action takes place.)

7 October 1971
William Friedkin’s Oscar Winner The French Connection opens. Based on a true story, the movie follows the adventures of New York cop “Popeye” Doyle, played by Gene Hackman, in his search for a French heroin dealer.

6 October: This Day in Mystery

6 October 1916
Stanley Ellin is born in Brooklym. He specializes in suspense and mystery short stories. His best known tale is “The Specialty of the House,” a subtle story of cannibalism in modern-day New York. He also writes novels, such as The Eighth Circle (1958) which will earn him the Best Novel Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. In 1983 the MWA will make him a Grand Master.

5 October: This Day in Mystery

5 October 1915
The first real pulp magazine, Detective Story, appears. Created in the form of the Nick Carter Library of dime novels, Detective Story will last until 1949.

4 October:This Day in Mystery

4 October 1895
Buster Keaton is born in a vaudeville trunk somewhere on the roads of the Midwest. In 1924 he will star in Sherlock Jr.


4 October 1931
Chester Gould’s comic strip hero Dick Tracy (“Crime does not pay,” “Little crimes lead to big crimes,” first appears in the newspaper.

4 October 1972
Bill Cosby and Robert Culp attempt to recreate the chemistry of I, Spy, but Hickey and Boggs, a TV movie which airs on this date, will be unsuccessful.

3 October: This Day in Mystery

3 October 1925
Erudite essayist, playwright and novelist Gore Vidal is born in West Point, NY. In the early 50s Vidal, using the pseudonym Edgar Box, publishes a trio of mysteries featuring public relations man Peter Cutler Sargeant, including Death in the Fifth Position (1952).

3 October 1941
The definitive film version of The Maltese Falcon is released, directed by John Huston. (There had been 2 earlier versions). It stars Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, and is the directorial debut of John Huston.

2 October: This Day in Mystery

2 October 1904
Graham Greene is born in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England. He will go on to author both serious novels and "entertainments" - as he calls his crime and espionage thrillers. Brighton Rock, Ministry of Fear and The Third Man are 3 of his most famous novels.

2 October 1955
Alfred Hitchcock Presents premieres on CBS. It features sardonic introductions and conclusions by Alfred Hitchcock.

1 October: This Day in Mystery

1 October 1910
In response to the anti-Union editorials of Los Angeles Times owner Harrison Gray Otis, unionists John and Jim McNamara plant a bomb in the printing department of the newspaper on this day. The subsequent explosion kills 21 workers.

1 October 1920
Actor Walter Matthau is born in New York City. He will take on many roles in the mystery and crime genres - even starring as Per Wohloo and Maj Sjowall's detective Martin Beck in The Laughing Policeman.

30 September: This Day in History

30 September 1906
John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who will write mysteries under the pseudonym Michael Innes, is born in Edinburgh. The Oxford scholar will create Inspector John Appleby, a well-mannered, erudite policeman who is iften called upon to solve murders in academia.
(Hamlet, Revenge! (1937))

30 September 1913
The police commissioner of San Francisco begins a program to clean up the Barbary Coast, a particularly lawless district in the city, by outlawing liquor, prostitution and dancing.

30 September 1935
The first Dick Tracy serial debuts on the Mutual Radio Network. Each episode opens with a burst of radio static and Tracy's laconic synopsis of the action - spoken into his two-way wrist radio.

29 September: This Day in Mystery

29 September 1927
Barbara G. Mertz, the real name of Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, is born in Canton, Illinois.

As Barbara Michaels her books are usually stand-alone, mysteries with hints of romance and the supernatural. As Elizabeth Peters, she is most famous for her books featuring archaeologist Amelia Peabody and her husband, Radcliffe Emerson.

She was awarded the first Grand Master Anthony Award at the 1986 Bouchercon.

28 September: This Day in Mystery

28 September, 1873
Emile Gaboriau, creator of Monsieur Lecoq-whose renown in the late 1800s brings about Sherlock Holmes' jealous estimation of him as a "miserable bungler" - dies in Paris at age 37.

28 September 1888
Sapper (pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile) is born in Bodmin, Cornwall. He authors a series of popular adventure-cum-espionage novels featuring Bulldog Drummond, beginning in 1920). Drummond and his allies fought the Boche (Germans), Bolsheviks, and non-Brits of every stripe.

28 September 1913
Historian-turned-mystery writer Ellis Peters (pseudonym of Edith Mary Pargeter) is born in Horsehay, Shropshire, England. She uses her knowledge of medieval times to create the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael - tales of a twelfth-century Benedictine monk who uses his knowledge of human nature to solve crimes. (Starting with A Morbid Taste For Bones, 1977).

28 September, 1945
The classic Joan Crawford melodrama with murder Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain's novel, is released.

27 September: This Day in Mystery

No mysterious stuff occurred on this day.

26 September: This Day in Mystery

26 September 1932
Ther first series of Fu Manchu radio dramas premieres on CBS. Sax Rohmer himself is on hand at the opening broadcast.

26 September 1948
The Adventures of Philip Marlowe begins on the CBS radio network. Gerald Mohr stars as a hard-boiled Marlowe, given to lecturing things on the evils of crime.

25 September: This Day in Mystery

25 September 1888
The London police receive their first letter signed "Jack the Ripper" which arrives shortly before the Ripper carries out his only double murder - that of Catherine Eddowes and Elizabeth Stride.

25 September 1897
Nobel-prize winning author William Faulkner is born in New Albany, Mississippi. Faulkner's Gothic tales of the South often contain elements of mystery, crime and detection. His 1931 melodramatic novel Sanctuary is a story of corruption peopled with hookers, half-wits, and bootleggers, while his attorney "Uncle" Gavin Stevens, in Intruder in the Dust, (1948) wrestles with Southern justice while defending a young black accused of murder.

25 September 1898
Richard Lockridge, who co-authors with his wife Frances the popular Mr. and Mrs. North novels, is born in St. Joseph, Missouri. The Norths are an urbane couple who somehow encounter murder wherever they go, beginning with The Norths Meet Murder (1940).

24 September: This Day In Mystery

24 September 1896
American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. The first fiction he writes is a murder story, "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage," written when Fitzgerald was 13 years old.

23 September: This Day in Mystery

23 September 1865
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy, is born in Tarna-Ors, Hungary. The baroness creates the first of the great armchair detectives, the Old Man in the Corner. He sits in a teashop in London and is brought mystifying crime cases by reporter Polly Burton.

She is also the creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

23 September 1935
The first of a dozen victims of the killer who would come to be known as the Torso Killer and the Mad Butcher of Cleveland is found in the city's industrial area. Known for chopping up his corpses, the Mad Butcher is never apprehended.

22 September: This Day in Mystery

22 September, 1944
The Pearl of Death, a Sherlock Holmes film in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce series, is released. It is based loosely on the Conan Doyle story "The Six Napoleons." It marked the screen debut of Rondo Hatton, an actor who suffered from a deforming disease called Acromelagia, as the Creeper.

22 September 1958
Mary Roberts Rinehart, founder of the Had-I-But-Known school of mystery, dies at eighty-two.

22 September 1958
Peter Gunn, Ivy League private investigator, makes his debut on TV in the show, Peter Gunn. Craig Stevens plays Gunn, Herschel Bernardi plays his policeman friend, Lt. Jacoby. The jazz theme music is by Henry Mancini.

21 September: This Day in Mystery

21 September, 1866
Historian, philosopher, science fiction writer, and man of letters H.G. Wells is born in Bromley, Kent. Several of Wells' novels use elements of mystery and suspense - including The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and The Invisible Man (1897).

21 September, 1924
Collin Wilcox is born in Detroit. Wilcox creates the long-suffering homicide detective Lt. Frank Hastings (The Lonely Hunter, 1969; The Pariah, 1988). His cases blend realistic crime investigation with a love for the mean streets of SAn Diego.

21 September, 1957Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr as Earle Stanley Gardner's attorney detective, debuts on television.

20 September: This Day in Mystery

Nothing mysterious happened on this day, according to The Mystery Book of Days, Mysterious Press, 1990!

19 September: This Day in Mystery

Warren William as Michael Lanyard in Lone Wolf Met a Lady

19 September 1879
Louis Joseph vance is born in Washington, DC. Inspired by the French rogue-hero Arsene Lupin, Vance creates the sophisticated safe cracker Michael Lanyard, aka The Lone Wolf. (The False Faces, 1918). He appears in 8 novels and becomes a movie hero in a series of films in the 1940s.

The Books
The Lone Wolf (1914)
The False Faces (1918)
Alias The Lone Wolf (1921)
Red Maquerade (1921)
The Lone Wolf Returns (1923)
The Lone Wolf's Son (1931)
Encore The Lone Wolf (1933)
The Lone Wolf's Last Prowl (1934)

18 September: This Day In Mystery

18 September 1872
William MacHarg, the first novelist to use a lie detector in a story, is born in Dover Plains, New York. With Edwin Balmer, MacHarg writes the short story collection The Achievement of Luther Trant (1910), one of the first crime fiction books to use modern psychology as its primary means of detection.

18 September 1967
Point Blank - John Boorman's film version of Richard Stark's novel The Hunter-is released. Lee Marvin stars as the cold-blooded criminal Parker - called WAlker in the movie. An extremely violent and expressionistic film, Point Blank represents the epitome of 1960s noir.

17 September: This Day in Mystery

17 September 1908
John Creasey is born in Southfields, Surrey. Creasey writes prodigiously under many pseudonyms, the most famous being J. J. Marric. He writes more than 560 fast-moving crime novels under 28 names. His series detectives include: The Toff, Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, Inspector Roger West, The Baron, and Doctor Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey.

17 September 1932
Robert Parker - creator of Spenser - is born. A detective with discriminating taste for fine food, good drink and top-notch conditioning, Spenser is hard-boiled but sophisticated. Books include The Godwulf Manuscript, Ceremony - and were adapted for the TV series Spenser for Hire.

17 September 1965
Honey West, starring Anne Francis, debuts on ABC. The character had made her debut on the TV series Burke's Law, starring Gene Barry. She received her own series, and was a private detective, with John Pine playing her sidekick.

_________
From: The Mystery Book of Days, by Mysterious Press, 1990

16 September: This Day in Mystery

16 September, 1918
Charles Chapin, editor on the New York Evening World, murders his wife, Nellie. Sentenced to life at Sing Sing, Chapin plants a series of gardens inside and outside the prison walls, becoming known as Sing Sing's Rose Man.

16 September 1935
Movie star Thelma Todd is found dead of asphyxiation in a blood-splashed car in the garage of her restaurant near Malibu. Todd, who was featured in the Marx Brothers films Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932) as well as a series of successful comedy shorts, is rumored to have defied L. A. gangsters who wanted to open a gambling establishment above her restaurant. Her killer is never found.

_________
From: The Mystery Book of Days, by Mysterious Press, 1990

15 September: This Day in Mystery

15 September 1890
Dame Agatha Christie is born in Torquay, Devonshire. Her books define the British "puzzle" mysteries of the Golden Age. Christie's detectives include the Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and the elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple.


15 September 1971
Columbo, starring Peter Falk as the disheveled lieutenant, premieres. (Bing Crosby had been offered the role but turned it down in order to concentrate on his golf game.)

14 September: This Day in Mystery

14 September 1874
Champion title-maker and Canadian mystery author Arthur Stringer is born in Chatham, Ontario. Stringer's most entertaining title may be: The Man Who Couldn't Sleep, Being A Relation of the Divers Strange Adventures Which Befell One Witter Kerfoot When, Sorely Troubled with Sleeplessness, He Ventured Forth at Midnight Along the Highways and Byways of Manhattan (1919).

13 September 1889
Carroll John Daly is born in Yonkers, New York. Best known as the creator of Race Williams, one of the first hard-boiled dicks ("Knights of the Open Palm," published in Black Mask, June 1923), Daly created the actual "first" in "Three Gun Terry" (Black Mask, May 1923). This story preceded Dashiell Hammett's first hard-boiled story featuring the Continental Op by four months.

13 September: This day in mystery

13 Sept, 1894
J. B. Priestly is born in Bradford, Yorkshire. His book, The Old Dark House, published in 1927 in England as Benighted, is so frequently imitated that its "gathering of disparate persons in a spooky house during a midnight rainstorm" becomes a cliche of the genre.

13 Sept, 1916
Roald Dahl is born in London. Dahl's collection of short stories, including Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss, Kiss (1960) contain several classics of short suspense and terror. His best known tale id Lamb to the Slaughter, in which the police eat the evidence.

13 Sept, 1974
The TV private eye series Rockford Files, starring James Garner as Jim Rockford, makes its debut.

Ever heard of the Mystery Guild?

If you're a dedicated fan of mysteries you should check them out.

It's a book club, of course, and you can be exposed to quite a few authors whom you otherwise might not see.

http://www.mysteryguild.com/

From their website:

Discover Mystery Guild Book Club and choose from a wide selection of bestselling mystery books, including true crime books, romantic suspense books and thriller books. Our book club has top books from popular authors such as James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Dean Koontz, Fern Michaels and many more. You'll find the best new book releases, as well as classic titles, discount books and recommendations from our editors. Mystery Guild Book Club is the place to order books online.

They have books in the following genres:
-American Detective
-Anthology
-British
-Cozy
-Historical
-Horror
-Non-fiction
-Police proceduresals
-SPy and intrigue
-Thriller and suspense

The Friends of Mr. Cairo by Jon and Vangelis

On the album of the same name. Recommended.

Mysterious Days: 19 June

1863
The first team of crooks in literature is created by Sir Max Pemberton, who is born on this date in Birmingham, England. His A Gentleman's Gentleman: Being Certain Pages From The Life And Strange Adventures Of Sir Nicolas Steele, Bart. , As Related By His Valet, Hildeb features a valet (who is a rogue) employed by a gentleman (who is a rogue), anticipatiungf Raffles and Bunny by three years.

Mysterious Days: 18 June

The author of the first instruction manual for crime writers, Carolyn Wells, is born in Rahway, New Jersey on this day. The Technique of the Mystery Story, published in 1913, includes her famous opinion: The detective story must seem real in the same sense that fairy tales seem real to children." Wells also writes 82 mystery novels, usually featuring the scholarly detective Fleming Stone. One book was The Clue, 1909.

1939
The Ellery Queen radio program premieres on CBS. Near the end of each drama a panel of guest celebrities try to guess the solution before Ellery gives the answer. (This is an experiment which is dropped after a few episodes.)

Mysterious Days: 17 June

1904
Ralph Bellamy is born in Chicago. He will play Ellery Queen in four films released in 1940 and 1941, beginning with Ellery Queen, Master Detective.

1917
Dean Martin is born in Steubenville, Ohio. He will go on to become an actor, singer and member of the Rat Pack. He will star as Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm in 4 campy film thrillers, including The Wrecking Crew (1969).

1953
Samuel Fuller's Cold War thriller Pickup on South Street, starring Richard Widmark, is released. Widmark plays a two-bit New York pickpocket who finds himself in possession of microfilm wanted by both the FBI and the Communists.

Mysterious Days: 16 June

1911
Victor Canning is born in Plymouth, England. His book A Handful of Silver (1954) is made into the movie Masquerade (1964) and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot (1976) is based on his The Rainbird Pattern (1972.)

1975
Edward S. Aarons, author of the "Assignment" series featuring indestructible CIA agent Sam Durrell, dies.

Mysterious Days: 15 June

1905
Wendell Hertig Taylor is born. A professor of chemistry at Princeton University, he collaborates with Jacques Barzun on the classic inventory of mystery fiction, A Catalog of Crime (1971).

Mysterious Days: 14 June

1930
Charles McCarry is born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. McCarry examines the lives of two families, the Hubbards and the Christophers-both in the business of espionage and counter espionage. McCarry spends ten years working for the CIA, and his experiences are reflected in the attitude of his unusual hero, poet-spy Paul Christopher. The Last Supper (1983) moves from the 1920s to the present, using the Christopher family as a historical barometer.


John Dickson Carr modeled his Gideon Fell on Chesterton.
1936
GK Chesterton dies. His 1908 thriller The Man Who Was Thursday, combines detection, espionage, secret codes, anarchists, disguises, policemen, slapstick and theology. He is also the author of the Father Brown mysteries.

Mysterious Days: 13 June

1935
Rex Burns, whose police procedurals featuring Denver cop Gabe Wager integrate theme and character with detailed knowledge of police methods, is born in San Diego.

His 1975 novel The Alvarez Journal won the Edgar for best first novel.

Denver police detective Gabriel Wager, assigned to the Organized Crime Unit, investigates a narcotics smuggling ring that operates out of a shop which imports Latin American handicrafts. The case leads Wager back into his own Hispanic past to confront acquaintances from his school days, whose path had led them outside the law.

https://www.rexburns.com/Gabe_Wager_Series.html

Mysterious Days: 12 June

1927
Henry Slesar, the writer of more than 500 short stories that usually combine suspense with a finely honed black humor, is born in Brooklyn. Slesar receives the Best First Novel Edgar for The Grey Flannel Shroud (1959).

Mysterious Days: 11 June

1923
Former show-business insider (and agent to such stars as Ramon Navarro) turned novelist George Baxt is born in Brooklyn. Baxt writes mordantly witty mystery novels in a variety of genres. In A Queer Kind of Death (1966) he introduces Pharoah Love, a gay black cop who operates within New York's homosexual community. Other books of his have real actors in roles, for example The Dorothy Parker Murder Case, the Marlene Dietrich Murder Case, and the William Powell and Myrna Loy Murder Case

Mysterious Days: 10 June

1936
Brian Freemantle is born in Southampton, Hampshire, England. He is the creator of Charlie Muffin, beginning with Charlie M (1977) and ending with The Run Around (1989).


1945
Father Brown, based on the GK Chesterton character, premiers on the Mutual radio network as a summer series. Karl Swenson plays the title role.

Mysterious Days: 9 June

1870
Charles Dickens dies, having completed only six of the twelve chapters of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and thus how it might have ended remains unknown. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée and has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon with his twin sister, Helena. Neville Landless and Drood take a dislike to one another the moment they meet. Drood later disappears under mysterious circumstances. Dickens died before he could finish the mystery.

The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly fictionalised Rochester, and feelingly evokes the atmosphere of the town as much as its streets and buildings.

Monthly:
April 1870 -September 1870

Mysterious Days: 8 June

1921
John Buxton Hilton is born on this day in Buxton, Derbyshire. Rural settings alive with rustic ignorance and intolerance are his trademarks. He writes under the pseudonym John Greenwood, and creates the elderly Inspector Mosley. Murder, Mr. Mosley (1983).

Mysterious Days: 7 June

1866
E.W. Hornung, is born in Middlesborough, Yorkshire. He is the brother in law of Arthur Conan Doyle, and creates A.J. Raffles - gentleman thief - to tweak his brother in law. He is also the author of Ther Crime Doctor (1914), a collection of stories about Dr. John Dollar (no relation to Max Marcin's Crime Doctor, Robert Ordway.)

1883
The New York Detective Library, a popular series of dime novels featuring Irish sleuth James Brady and his nemesis Jesse James, releases the first publication in its fifteen year run.

Mysterious Days: 6 June

1904
Helen McCloy is born in New York City. She will be the first female president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Her psychological thrillers often focus on an innocent relative of the suspected criminal. Her series character, Dr. Basil Willing, is the first American psychiatrist-detective, and the first to use psychiatry in discovering clues.

McCloy was once married to hard-boiled writer Brett Holliday.

Mysterious Days: 5 June

1908
Georgiana Ann Randolph is born in Chicago. Under the pseudonym Craig Rice, she writes screwball comedy mysteries featuring John J. Malone. She also ghost-wrote The G-String Murders (1941) for Gypsy Rose Lee, and Crime on my Hands (1944) for George Sanders.

Mysterious Days: 4 June

1940
The imaginative and bizarre writer George C. Chesbro is born in Washington, DC. He writes detective novels featuring Dr. Robert Feredrickson, an ex-circus performer, criminologist and dwarf, better known as Mongo.

His Beasts of Valhalla (1985) blends fantasy, computer technology, and Wagnerian and Tolien mythology with the traditional private eye style.



1949
On this day, in the comic strips, Dick Tracy finally marries Tess Truheart, after an 18-year engagement.

Mysterious Days: 3 June

1910
Paulette Goddard is born in Long Island, New York. She will co-star with Bob Hope in two classic mystery films in 1939 and 1940, the sound remake of The Cat and the Canary, and The Ghost Breakers.

1925
Tony Curtis is born on this day in The Bronx, New York. With a long movie career, he will also co-star, with Roger Moore, in the TV series, The Persuaders.

1992
Actor Robert Morley dies in England. While not typecast as an actor in mysteries, he was in quite a few mystery and crime movies - Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (1977), Hot Millions (1968), The Alphabet Murders (As Hastings to Tony Randall's Hercule Poirot), and Law and Disorder (1958).

Mysterious Days: 2 June

1916
John Michael Evelyn is born in Worthing, Sussex. He writes under the pseudonym Michael Underwood.

His books include:
The Case Against Philip Quest (1962)
The Injudicious Judge (1987)

They feature a background of legal goings-on, courtroom drama and detective investigation. His experiences as an attorney are reflected in the legalistic back-room ambiance of his work.

Mysterious Days: 1 June

1829
Sir Robert Peel's Police Bill is passed, leading to the creation of an organized British police force, housed in Whitehall Palace adjoining Great Scotland Yard road. In the 1880s the headquarters is moved to a new building at the Parliament end of Whitehall, and is called New Scotland Yard. (It's moved again since then.)



1887
Clive Brook is born in London. In 1927 Brook had the lead in Josef von Sternberg's Underworld, the first gangster movie. In 1929, he will star in the first talking movie featuring Sherlock Holmes.

1959
Sax Rohmer, creator of Fu Manchu dies.



1978
The last episode of the popular LA crime sseries Baretta airs on ABC. Robert Blake stars as the streetwises, unconventional cop Tony Beretta.

Mysterious Days: 31 May

1939
Charlie Chan in Reno is released.

The second Chan film to feature Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan, it co-starred Sen Yung as his son Jimmy.

Sen Yung on right, Sydney Toler, Ricardo Cortez next to woman

Mysterious Days: 30 May

1902
George Sims, is born in Iowa. He uses the pseudonym Paul Cain for his stories which are published in Black Mask. His only novel is The Fast One (1933) the story of gunman Gerry Kells and his dipsomaniac lover S Grandquist. Some consider it the "toughest tough guy novel ever written" which remains "as violent and disturbing today as when it first appeared."

1912
The "professor" of detection, Julian Symons, is born in London. A noted scholar, critic, biographer, novelist, president of the Detection Club, and Mystery Writers of America Grand Master (1982).

He is the author of:
The Thirty-first of February (1950)
The Plot Against Roger Rider (1973)

His erudite study of crime literature, Bloody Murder (in US - Mortal Consequences) is a cornerstone analysis of the genre.