It’s the birthday of American novelist Elizabeth George (b. 1949), creator of the Detective Inspector Lynley mysteries set in England. Lynley is an aristocrat (“I say, that’s not cricket”) and his trusty assistant, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, is working class (“Cor blimey”) and the author Elizabeth George is heartily sick of people asking why she, [...]
It’s the birthday of author Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), who created the character Perry Mason and wrote more than 140 mystery and detective novels, selling millions of copies to become the best-selling American author of the 20th century up to the time of his death in 1970. He also used to type so furiously that [...]
It’s the birthday of author and scholar Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957), best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Sayers was born at Oxford in Oxfordshire, England, the daughter of an Anglican rector. (Rector? Damn near killed her. I’m sorry. I need to stop doing that. That is the last time. Very probably.) She was [...]
It’s the birthday of mystery writer Sara Paretsky (b. 1947), who in 1982 revolutionized the genre by publishing Indemnity Only, a mystery featuring strong female detective V.I. Warshawski. (This was evidently an idea whose time had come: Sue Grafton published her first mystery featuring female detective Kinsey Millhone that same year.) Paretsky has written 19 [...]
It’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who created one of the most famous characters in all of English literature, Sherlock Holmes, featured in four novels and over 50 short stories. Doyle also wrote historical fiction, such as The White Company (1891), and nonfiction, such as The Great Boer War (1900) and The [...]