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Mystery Authors (A)



David Alexander



Kentucky horse-racing journalist David Alexander (1907-1973) wrote fifteen mystery novels (as well as short stories and other books) between 1951 and 1962.



Most Men Don't Kill / Murder in Black and White



This volume introduces hefty (and eccentric) millionaire Tommy Twotoes, penguin fancier and former bootlegger, and Terence R. Rooke, aka Soldier, fresh from a military hospital and starting out as a private investigator. (Books are separate as epubs.)


Most Men Don’t Kill: Working for an Army buddy who has set up a detective agency, Soldier finds himself in a pickle when his stakeout of a married woman’s tryst ends with the discovery of a corpse. Lying low in the Bowery, Soldier attracts the attention of millionaire Tommy Twotoes, who decides to do some investigating of his own.


Murder in Black and White: Soldier is visiting a funeral parlor at the behest of Tommy Twotoes when a small albino man crashes the party and shoots up the corpse. This is only the beginning, as Soldier encounters more bodies, more crazy characters, and a loud-mouthed parrot.


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Grant Allen



Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848-1899) was born in Canada but grew up in the United States and Europe. He wrote numerous scientific and literary works, including science fiction and mysteries.



An African Millionaire



Grant Allen's classic, An African Millionaire, pits a greedy South African millionaire, and his long-suffering brother-in-law/secretary (not quite so greedy), against criminal rogue Colonel Clay, a master of disguise who always seems to know more than he should.


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Miss Cayley's Adventures / Hilda Wade



Two of Grant Allen's female protagonists are featured in this pairing.


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Leslie Allen



Horace Brown (1908-1996) wrote another mystery, Whispering City, under his own name. (His obituary mentions that he wrote eight mysteries. Perhaps others were also under pseudonyms?) He was a journalist in the 1920s, then moved into radio writing. He later spent over a decade as a municipal politician in Toronto, was a PR specialist for Ontario Hydro, and founded the Canadian March of Dimes.



Murder in the Rough



When Napoleon B. Smith drove his golf ball into the rough of Hell’s Half-Acre, he had not the slightest idea that he was heading into a jungle trail of murder that would tangle him with one of the most ruthless killers of his long career as a criminologist.


In this swiftly paced murder mystery you meet Napoleon B. Smith, mastodon of a man, grim and ruthless as any killer, a private investigator who learned about crime the hard way on a police beat. He's accompanied by his writing side-kick, Leslie Allen.


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James Z. Alner



James Z. Alner was a mystery until Curtis Evans undertook to solve it. Best evidence is that he was Dr. James A. Tobey, a public health official. Read more about that in Curt's introduction to the paperback edition.



The Capital Murder



Five men are discussing crime in the garden of the Serpentine Club in Washington D.C. when news comes of the death, apparently from an overdose of morphine, of a beautiful and mysterious Argentine woman in a Washington mansion. Four of the men present find themselves engaged in helping the fifth, Commissioner Selden, to investigate the case which becomes stranger and more complex as it progresses.


Clues are plentiful but the trail is a long one, and before Trevor Stoke, a scientist and one of the four, has found its end, the reader has followed with him many a false scent, delighted in many clever deductions, but never guessed the solution.


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Mary Meigs Atwater



Mary Meigs Atwater (1878-1956) was an American artist (studying at the Chicago Art Institute and in Paris) best known as a leader in the movement resurrecting handweaving as an art form. Raised in Iowa, she met her husband, Maxwell Atwater (a respected mining engineer), while studying in Paris. From there they moved to various mining camps throughout the American West (and even Bolivia and Mexico), before settling in Montana. They had two children before Maxwell died from influenza in 1919. Mary supported her family afterward through teaching, writing, and occupational therapy.


Crime in Corn-Weather (published as Murder in Midsummer in the UK) appears to be Mary’s sole foray into novel-length fiction. Her son, Montgomery Atwater (1904-1975), became an author of young adult adventure/mystery fiction, among more physical occupations (avalanche researcher, forester, rancher, and more).



Crime in Corn-Weather



"William Breen, hard-hearted banker of Keedora, Iowa, is shot by an unknown assailant whose identity remains a mystery until the very end. This is a perfect murder because there is no corpus delicti and no real clue—only a deserted Buick with blood on the back cushions. The reason for the murder and how it was committed and concealed come out gradually as the story unfolds and the little village fills with newspaper men and curiosity seekers.


"Unlike most murder stories, Crime in Corn-Weather is given depth and richness by its realistic portrayal of the effect of the murder on the lives of the community. It is not only a first-rate mystery but a remarkable novel as well—vivid, fast-moving, with living characters and complete reality." (Library Column, Williamsburg, Iowa, Journal Tribune, 1935)


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