More on Vera Caspary

By A. B. Emrys

I have published a great deal about Caspary's appreciation for the novels of Wilkie Collins, the Victorian author often considered to have launched the mystery novel, and Caspary's adaptations of both his The Woman and White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868). In addition to Laura, she went on to rework Collins' plots and characters in Stranger than Truth (1946), set in Caspary's familiar world of ad agencies, and The Mystery of Elizabeth, about an amnesiac who's claimed by three sets of people, all of whom want to lock her up.

She was one of the most innovative of Collins's many adapters, who range from Bram Stoker to Elizabeth Peters - and the most successful one I've found at modernizing the character narration of his novels of testimony. Among other changes, her principal female characters tell their own version of the story. Collins' wide experimentation with having characters tell all or parts of the story blended perfectly with Caspary's instincts as playwright and scriptwriter, and her use of voice in novels flowered from Laura (1942) through the rest of her career.

Three Caspary films are available to see - and the best of these is Laura. Caspary fought with Preminger for her positive view of the title character and the film ultimately captured it. Note that in the chief setting, Laura Hunt's apartment, she lives alone with a large portrait of herself. This backdrop wordlessly conveys Caspary's independence theme.

The other two films are A Letter to Three Wives and Blue Gardenia. A Letter to Three Wives, which the New York Times called one of the top 10 films of 1949, was based on a script Caspary adapted from another writer's novel. The plot is about three wives tormented by a local siren who claims to have run off with one of their husbands. Among Caspary's additions to the story were strengthening the women as they find out the truth, as well as the use of the taunting voiceover. The Fritz Lang film, Blue Gardenia, adapted by others from her screen scenario tells the story of a telephone operator so desperate for affection that she goes out with the company seducer. Little of this study of a lonely single woman comes off in the film, but Nat King Cole does sing the title song.

Two of Caspary's novels, Laura and Bedelia (The Feminist Press, 2005) and a collection of stories are in print now. The stories collect several of her best 1940s and 50s magazine pieces, especially "The Murder in the Stork Club" (Crippen & Landru, 2009), about an upper-class woman who writes radio mysteries and is married to a working-class detective. When she's a suspect in a nightclub killing, he puts aside their quarrels over her mink coat to clear her name.

Most of Caspary's novels can be found through online sources, chiefly in old library editions that are further evidence of how well-known she was as a writer. Several articles on her (including my own) have appeared in Clues: A Journal of Detection. The Vera Caspary Papers, an archive she created, resides with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison, housed in the Wisconsin Historical Society. The archive includes unproduced scripts (Illicit was bought for Marilyn Monroe, who killed herself before production), movie scenarios (including Gardenia), book manuscripts, revisions and a great deal of correspondence about her work.

In writing about Caspary, it's my hope that readers will rediscover and enjoy her writing and more scholars will comment on her long career as novelist, playwright and scriptwriter.





A. B. Emrys is the author of Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel and professor emeritus of English at the University of Nebraska - Kearney.

Vera Caspary: A Lost Sister in Crime

By A. B. Emrys

When Vera Caspary died in 1987, every major newspaper ran her obituary, and they had plenty of information to cite. Over half a century, she had published 17 novels plus novellas and short stories. In addition, 20 films were credited to her as adaptations of her work, or were based on scenarios or scripts she wrote. The play she adapted from her most famous novel was still staged (and is today).

Her last novel, The Mystery of Elizabeth, came out in 1976, followed by her critically-praised autobiography, The Secrets of Grownups, in 1979. She was best known then, and only known now, if at all, as the author of Laura, her 1940s mystery about an ad executive targeted for murder. The novel was filmed by Otto Preminger as one of the first movies called noir.

I've been helping to get Caspary's work back into print and I made her a major focus in my book, Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary, and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel (McFarland, 2011). In doing so, I've met a fascinating character and discovered books and movies I now recommend to others.

Caspary's unflinching spirit made Sojourner, in a review of her autobiography, call her "a natural and unabashed female rebel." Part of her rebellion was her determination to be a professional writer. When she got turned down over and over for business writing jobs, she took what she could get and finagled her way into writing ads, much like her character, Laura Hunt.

Her early novels veered from fantasy (the tale of the daughter of side-show performers who flees to avoid becoming a tattooed lady in Ladies & Gents), to stringent analysis of class, race and gender-bashing (in The White Girl about a black woman who passes for white) to a family epic about class prejudice among a clan of Portuguese-descended Jews much like her own family (Thicker Than Water).

The Depression and her membership in the Communist Party strengthened Caspary's focus on serious issues. Yet it was murder plots, the first of which was Laura, her fourth novel, that offered the fresh vehicles for her to continue analyzing the dynamic between independence and the temptation to cling and possess, something both her male and female characters have to confront to survive.

Even her most classically-plotted murder books deeply embedded other crimes. In one of her most chilling plots, Bedlia (1944), a black widow novel, the tables are turned on the serial bride in a scene so callous it generates some sympathy for a killer.

She became one of the mid-century writers of what were dubbed "psychothrillers," and an older colleague of Patricia Highsmith. Fans of Highsmith's conundrums (and I'm one) would also enjoy Caspary's The Weeping and the Laughter (1950), whose lead character may have been attacked by one of her greedy relatives or may have tried to kill herself; The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966), in which a disabled, angry man keeps a deliberately false diary that accuses his wife of wanting him dead - and then becomes a corpse or Final Portrait (1971) in which an actor turns down the part of Hamlet only to play it in real life.

To be continued tomorrow ...

A. B. Emrys is the author of Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel and professor emeritus of English at the University of Nebraska - Kearney.

Dorothy B. Hughes: Ghost of Honor

By Jeffrey Marks

This year, one of Left Coast Crime's Ghosts of Honor is Dorothy B. Hughes, one of my favorite authors. The conference is being held March 24 - 27 in Santa Fe. I’d love to be leaving the cold behind to head for New Mexico but, alas, I’m going to be admiring from afar. I sent off a basket of books to the conference, mainly novels by Hughes.

Hughes and I share bonds in the mystery world. First, she so very kindly offered her assistance to me when I was writing my biography of Craig Rice. I corresponded with her about Craig and their common bond of being women authors in the 1940s. Hughes shared stories of sitting on the front porch with Craig and Anthony Boucher, drinking lemonade and talking about books and reviews. She was generous with information that helped to round out Craig’s character.

After her death, I wrote about Hughes in Atomic Renaissance, devoting a chapter to her works, her Hollywood career, and her decision to give up writing to care for her family. Her last novel, The Expendable Man, is a work of art. For 50 pages, we see the nervous energy of the protagonist as he picks up a blonde who is later murdered. His anxiety is so palpable that you wonder as a reader why he’s so paranoid, until Hughes lets you in on his secret. I can’t tell you the secret, because it would spoil the novel, but it’s definitely worth reading for yourself. For a last novel, it was a wonderful way to go.

I was amazed at some of the fantastic works (Dread Journey, The Blackbirder and others) by Hughes that hold up 50 years after their publication. Of course, she is best known for In A Lonely Place, a masterpiece that is overlooked too often. It covers the anxiety and darkness of the men who have been taught to kill in World War II and who must return home to fit into a society that no longer appreciates that skill. If it wasn’t for the Bogart film, the book would likely not be remembered at all.

Finally, Hughes and I have one more bond in common. We’ve both written a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner. Her book in 1978 used significant parts of Gardner’s own memoirs, while mine is hoping to cement Gardner’s place in the genre with more analysis of his work in the field. Hers is done — and I am immensely jealous of that! I’m still writing the 1950s, but working to finish that decade in the next few weeks. And off to Mississippi in a few weeks for more research!



Jeffrey Marks is the award-winning author of Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery, Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s, and the Anthony Award-winning Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography. He is also the author of the U.S. Grant mystery series that includes The Ambush of My Name and A Good Soldier. Marks lives in Cincinnati.

Women of Mystery: Gypsy and Craig

By Jeffrey Marks

Two women in the 1940s likely had more names than most of their era -- Craig Rice (also known as Georgiana Craig Rice Follows Lipton DeMott) and Gypsy Rose Lee (also known as Rose Louise Hovacs.) They had much more in common as well. Both were fixtures in Chicago. Both loved the nightlife and weren’t too concerned about married lovers. Both were also mystery writers.

Craig had written a string of mystery novels in the early 1940s, beginning with 8 Faces at 3, her first novel, in 1939. She’d published several by the time that Gypsy decided to write one as well.

The rumor has long run through the mystery community that Craig ghostwrote Gypsy’s two mystery novels. Craig mentioned Gypsy in her Time magazine interview. There was correspondence including Craig distributed as part of the publicity campaign for The G-String Murders. And Craig did write a mystery novel for George Sanders, which was a poorly kept secret.

The situation became even more complicated when Craig worked on the screenplay for "Lady of Burlesque" starring Barbara Stanwyck, which was based on The G-String Murders. Craig told Time magazine that she had worked as Gypsy’s publicist, which only fueled the fires.

The relationship between the two authors does cause some suspicion about collaboration. I did my best to debunk the myth in my biography of Craig Rice, using the laws of physics that a body cannot be in two places at once. During the times in question, Craig and Gypsy lived nowhere near each other.

Two recent biographies have shed additional light on the writing of Gypsy’s books.

At the time that she was writing The G-String Murders, Gypsy was living in Brooklyn at a home with W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and other well-known authors. Harper’s Bazaar’s fiction editor, George Davis, helped Gypsy during this time. He helped her write the first chapters of the book and edited the following chapters as she took over the creation of the work.

Abbott’s biography of Gypsy, American Rose, goes so far as to detail how Gypsy managed to use a typewriter with those long fingernails. Abbott does intimate that Gypsy might have had another kind of literary assistance, however, reporting a rumor that Gypsy and Simon & Schuster editor Lee Wright might have carried on a lesbian affair during the creation of the first novel.

In Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee, Noralee Frankel has located information on the relationship between Craig and Gypsy. This correspondence is most telling. Rice wrote that The G-String Murders left her breathless, hardly the word to describe one’s own work. She asked Gypsy for tips on how she did it. Rice also offered any assistance she could in quashing the rumors about the authorship of Gypsy’s two mystery novels.

These new biographies, while approaching the subject in different ways, both agree on one point: Gypsy wrote her own novels. Her son, Erik Lee Preminger, was able to verify that his mother wrote her own memoirs, so her literary talent cannot be denied. Hopefully, now these two literary titans can stand separately but as friends.



Jeffrey Marks is the award-winning author of "Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery," "Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s," and the Anthony Award-winning "Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography." He is also the author of the U.S. Grant mystery series that includes "The Ambush of My Name" and "A Good Soldier." Marks lives in Cincinnati.

Congratulations to Sisters in Crime Founding Mother Sara Paretsky

By Cathy Pickens, SinC President

Bouchercon 2010: Sara Paretsky checks in with volunteers from the SinC/Northern California chapter on duty in the conference hospitality suite. From left: Helen Sandoval, Sharon Owen, Chloe Winston and Sara Paretsky. Photo courtesy of Gigi Pandian.

On Thursday, the Mystery Writers of America announced that Sara Paretsky is this year’s MWA Grand Master.

According to the organization’s news release, “MWA's Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.”

Well, Sara Paretsky has done all of that – written a significant, high-quality body of work AND made important contributions to the mystery genre.

High on the list of those contributions – particularly to anyone reading this blog – is her role as a founding mother of Sisters in Crime.

Paretsky will receive the Grand Master Award at the Edgar Awards Banquet in New York in April. MWA will mark its 65th birthday at the event, making the Grand Master honor even more special. In addition, 2011 will be the year that SinC celebrates the 25th anniversary of its founding.

In 1987, one year after providing the spark that launched Sisters in Crime, Paretsky was named Woman of the Year by MS. magazine. To all of the women crime writers who followed on the many trails she has blazed, however, she’s been the Woman of the Year for many years.

Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski novels helped open the door for women private investigators in crime fiction, and she herself has opened doors – and opened eyes – to the need for more balance in reviews, in advances and in recognition for women writing crime fiction.

In April 2007, by a quirk of fate, I attended a ceremony at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge (owned by Kate Mattes, another SinC founding mother). At the event, Ms. P. accepted a Dove Award on behalf of Sisters in Crime, presented by the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association in recognition of SinC’s strong support of women crime writers.

As goddess/past president Roberta Isleib noted on her blog that week, it was exciting to be in the jammed bookstore with two founding mothers. (Kate Mattes was also in attendance.)

Did they dream in 1986 that, one day, Sisters in Crime would be more than 3,000 members strong and international in scope? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m sure in their vision for SinC they knew that sisters would help other sisters – and brothers – along the road. (And, for me, that sisterly bond and supporting hand were the things that attracted me to Sisters in Crime not quite 20 years ago.)

Thank you, MWA, for giving SinC sisters and brothers everywhere a wonderful new opportunity to celebrate the glorious network that Sara Paretsky launched nearly 25 years ago.

And congratulations, Ms. P., your Sisters in Crime are celebrating with you – all across the globe.



Cathy Pickens, the national president of Sisters in Crime, serves on the MWA board of directors. She is the author of the award-winning Southern Fried mystery series featuring South Carolina attorney Avery Andrews. The most recent title in the series is Can’t Never Tell.

Metta Fuller Victor: The First Woman Crime Novelist in the U.S.

By Jeffrey Marks

Recently, the long-forgotten works of American author Metta Fuller Victor, who wrote her mysteries under the name of Seeley Regester, have been reintroduced to the mystery community. The novels that have been re-published in the last 10 years predate Anna Katherine Green’s work by almost a decade, making Victor the first author and first woman author to produce a full-length mystery novel in the United States.

Little is known about Fuller’s personal life. She was born in 1831 and seemed called to writing from an early age. Fuller didn’t limit her craft to detective novels. She wrote in genres ranging from westerns to rags-to-riches works, using a new pseudonym for each genre. At 25, she married Orville Fuller, the editor for Beadle and Adams. The marriage, which produced nine children, allowed Fuller to publish more of her works. Beadle’s Monthly serialized The Dead Letter in 1866 and the novel came out in book form the following year. The Figure Eight appeared in 1869.

Fuller’s works are typically Postbellum in style. Her novels give insight into the social mores of the time. She would be classified as a cozy author today, writing books that focus on the effect of a crime on a family and the ramifications of crime. In her work, murders threaten the domestic tranquility and must be cleared up to restore equilibrium.

Like many women of her era, Fuller was a proponent of social change. Her other works included denunciations against slavery, alcoholism and Mormon polygamy. The Dead Letter has a distinctly moralistic tone when the villain’s gambling and wanton behavior foreshadows the solution.

While her mysteries use a methodical approach to solve a murder, Fuller is not above using supernatural means to further her plots. She uses the detective’s clairvoyant daughter to locate a suspect in The Dead Letter and a sleepwalking governess in The Figure Eight. These gothic elements are surprising to today’s readers who expect fair play in their mysteries, but not to the readers of the 1860s who knew Poe as much for The Telltale Heart as his tales of detection.

Jeffrey Marks is the award-winning author of "Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery," "Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s," and the Anthony Award-winning "Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography." He is also the author of the U.S. Grant mystery series that includes "The Ambush of My Name" and "A Good Soldier." Marks lives in Cincinnati.

Happy Belated Birthday, Dame Agatha

By C.L. Phillips

Did you ever forget a dear friends birthday, only to discover after the fact that it was a big one? A birthday that ended in a "zero"? One of my favorite authors, Agatha Christie celebrated her 120th birthday on September 15. Well, perhaps celebrated isn't exactly the right word, after all, Dame Christie passed away in 1976. She published over a hundred books, and her 1952 play Mousetrap is still on stage in the West End in London.

What I find most delightful about Agatha Christie is that now, thirty-four years after her death, her work is being adapted for graphic novels. Harper Collins started the adaptations in 2006, and nineteen of her novels have been issued in this form. As a collector of Tintin and Asterix stories, I look forward to tracking down one of Agatha Christie's mysteries.

In honor of her birthday, the BBC released a web-based archive. The archive contains audio interviews dating back to 1955. Listen as she explains how she became a novelist.

Belated well-wishers can still celebrate with her favorite cake, Delicious Death. You can find the recipe here. The recipe was inspired by a Miss Marple mystery, A Murder is Announced.

Her web site is filled with interesting content. Be sure to check out the blog for stories from her grandson. Could you imagine sitting around the fire, trying to guess "who-dun-it" with your grandmother, Agatha? The entire site is so entertaining, I'm kicking myself for not finding it until now.

And although I missed the big 120th birthday festival, the English Riveria beckons to me. This web site offers advice on sites, lodging, and activities. I can dream of a mystery writers conference in Torquay, can't I?
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Just who was Anna Katherine Green?

By Leslie Shortlidge

Pennsylvania politics took a back seat to mystery one day in 1878.  Who, asked the state’s legislators, was the real author of the taut, gritty mystery novel The Leavenworth Case? Surely “Anna Katharine Green” was a pen name for someone of the male persuasion. since the story of murder and subsequent detection was considered “manifestly beyond a woman’s powers.”*

The elected officials of PA were wrong. Anna Katharine Green was indeed Anna Katharine Green. Born in Brooklyn in 1846, her father, first reader, and first editor, James Wilson Green, was a lawyer. One has to assume that young Anna was paying quite a bit of attention to the stories her father brought home from work, or been sufficiently interested in criminal law to conduct her own investigation into police procedure and criminal trials. The Leavenworth Case, which was a huge success, immediately assumes a form that 21st century readers know and love: a body, a post-mortem, a locked room, a potential murder weapon, the testimony of witnesses, family secrets. Green puts all of these now-familiar tropes into play very quickly, commanding the reader’s attention and exciting curiosity.

She also introduces the reader to perhaps the most important trope, and that is the canny but eccentric sleuth in the personage of Mr. Gryce, who confounds our expectations from the get-go, as the novel’s narrator explains: 

“And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book, or button.”

The dialogue is sharp – no excessive tag lines clutter up the rapid back-and-forth of these post-bellum Brooklynites. Human nature is on display in the personages of the household staff and the jurors at the inquest. Love shows up right away, unbidden and unhelpful. Secrets are choked back by those unwilling to reveal them. Glances are exchanged.

Green wrote at least 40 other books, and also created detectives Violet Strange (isn’t that the best name ever?) and Amelia Butterworth, characters who perhaps influenced Nancy Drew and Miss Marple.

Judge for yourself the importance of Green’s work:  The first ten people to comment on this blog will be entered to win the just-issued Penguin edition of The Leavenworth Case.
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Leslie Shortlidge is a Guppie and lives in Columbus, Ohio. You can follow her on Twitter, where her handle is Bookorama. Most of her posts are exciting updates on her word count, using the #amwriting hash tag.

Ahhh, Greenway . . . A Dame's Hideaway

By Hannah Dennison

My parents were avid readers. Every other Saturday, we’d troop to the library to select our next read. Naturally, Agatha Christie was often among the stack of books we brought home to devour.

Greenway was Agatha Christie’s summer home in England and is just five miles from where my mother lives in Totnes, Devon. Mum has worked as a volunteer for the National Trust for 30 years and last summer, she added Greenway to her ever-growing list of things that keep her busy. Not bad for someone who just celebrated her 80th birthday.

We’d known for ages that Greenway had been undergoing a massive restoration process — to the tune of $7.8 million. The house and glorious woodland garden were given to the National Trust in 2000 by Agatha Christie’s daughter Rosalind and her second husband, Anthony Hicks, and Rosalind’s son, Mathew Prichard. When Rosalind and Anthony passed away in 2004 and 2005 respectively, Mathew took the generous next step of gifting virtually the entire contents to the National Trust.

Mathew said that his parents were fiercely protective of the Greenway legacy. His greatest wish was for people who visit Greenway to feel some of the magic and sense of place that he felt as a child in the 1950s and 1960s. Hence the house has been recreated in the style of those years that Mathew remembers as his happiest — during his grandmother’s heyday.

The current house was actually built in 1790 by an American from Boston named Roope Harris Roope. Over the years, Greenway was rebuilt, altered and extended by various owners, including local MPs, merchants and bankers, until Agatha Christie — known locally as Mrs. Mallowan — or just “Mrs. M” — bought the house for £6,000 in 1938 with her second husband, Max, the famed archaeologist.

They, too, made changes — although Christie was to remark later that she wished she’d had the foresight to add a small kitchen next to the dining room. It had never occurred to her there would come a day when there was no domestic help!

Shortly afterwards, World War II came. As part of the preparations for D-Day, the Admiralty eventually requisitioned Greenway for the use of the United States Coast Guard. Greenway became the Officers Mess for the 10th US Coast Guard Flotilla based in the Dart Estuary. Among them was Lt. Marshall Lee, who was to become an unofficial Greenway war artist. He created a vividly poignant frieze around the walls of the library that can still be enjoyed today.

The National Trust has kept their promise to Mathew Prichard. Greenway remains in a 1950s English time warp — right down to the thick Bronco medicated toilet paper in the Victorian lavatory.

Greenway is not a museum with “do not touch” signs and roped-off rooms that provide mere glimpses of the treasures beyond. It feels more like an open, private home where the owners have just popped out and will be back shortly.

Anthony Hicks’ hat collection is stacked on an oak gate-leg table, family photographs are scattered throughout and an antique drinks tray is set up, ready for an evening cocktail. Visitors are invited to play the grand piano in the drawing room and use the tennis court. The dining room can also be hired for private dinner parties. Some of the chairs can be sat on, making it more comfortable to leaf through wonderful scrapbooks filled with anecdotes. I particularly enjoyed the “Confessionals,” listing each family member’s favorite flowers, pet peeves, cherished values and fears. In fact Greenway is such a warm and welcome place to visit, my mother related a story that caused much merriment among the volunteers. One afternoon, a four-year old girl was discovered, snuggled under the duvet, fast asleep in Agatha Christie’s bed. She’d even taken off her shoes.

The Victorians were great collectors and Agatha Christie — born in 1890 — was no exception. The mind-boggling collection of antique furniture, house wares and accouterments at Greenway span five generations. They include Tartanware, Meissen, Maunchlinware, papier mâché, enameled boxes, Bargeware, Verge watches, Stevengraphs, Treen and Tunbridgeware. Many items were collected from trips Agatha Christie and Max made to the Orient. I nearly fainted when I saw a camel from the Tang dynasty sitting happily on the sideboard, instead of being protected under reinforced glass.

The highlight of my visit was reading facsimiles of Agatha Christie’s notebooks. It is of great comfort to know that even the Queen of Crime, with more than 80 books under her belt, said, “To begin with I had no joy in writing, no élan. I had worked out the plot – a conventional plot – I knew, as one might say, where I was going, but I could not see the scene in my mind’s eye and the people would not come alive. I was driven desperately on by the desire, indeed the necessity to write another book and make some money.”

Another Agatha Christie gem is a tape recording of an interview she had with a BBC radio program in 1955. When asked to describe her writing method, she said “…the real work is done in thinking out the development of your story and worrying about it until it comes right. That may take quite a while. Then, when you’ve got all your material together, all that remains is to find time to write the thing!”

Unfortunately, if anyone is expecting to see her writing room, they will be disappointed. Robyn Brown, Greenway’s Property Manager who has overseen the entire rebirth of Greenway, said that Agatha Christie wrote when traveling with Max on digs throughout the Middle East. Greenway was a family summer retreat and the place where she celebrated finishing a book. 

Greenway was clearly the inspiration for many of her plots. Dead Man’s Folly (1956) was set at the late Georgian, early Victorian Boat House — complete with plunge pool — overlooking the River Dart and the Scold’s Stone, supposedly where disobedient wives were trussed up to drown in medieval times.

As my mother and I finished our champagne and ate the last of her birthday cake, a certain chill came over me. The dark waters of the plunge pool seemed to glimmer ominously. Was something lurking beneath the muddy waters, or were our eyes tricked by the dappling sunlight pouring in through the half-opened door?

Now there’s an idea for a story …
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Hannah Dennison writes the Vicky Hill mysteries. Her third book, Expose! will be released this month. Visit her website.  Hannah is a member of the Killer Characters blog and posts every 12th of the month.
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Getting to Greenway
Greenway is 200 miles southwest of London. This year there have been 80,000 visitors — the house is small with a lot to see. If traveling by car it is essential to pre-book a parking spot. There are no exceptions as it is physically impossible to park on the narrow roads leading to Greenway and you will be turned away. The recommended route is either by old-fashioned steam train from Paignton or Dartmouth or even better, the “Green Way” along the tranquil River Dart. Ferries run from Dartmouth, Torquay or Brixham. On disembarking at Greenway jetty, it’s a very pretty short walk up to the house. 

For opening times and events, check www.nationaltrust.or.uk/greenway and ferries www.greenwayferry.co.uk. For diehard fans, one floor of the main house has been turned into a five-bedroom apartment available for rent — so continuing Greenway’s legacy as a holiday retreat.

What you DIDN'T know about Mary Roberts Rinehart

By Joyce Tremel

If Sisters in Crime had been around at the turn of the 20th century, Mary Roberts Rinehart would have been an active member. Born in the North Side (then called Allegheny City) of Pittsburgh in 1876, Rinehart was the natural choice for a namesake when the Pittsburgh chapter of SinC needed a name.


Rinehart began writing after she and her physician husband lost their savings in the stock market crash of 1903. Often called the “American Agatha Christie,” she became a pioneer in the world of mystery fiction, and invented the Had-I-But-Known type of storytelling. Her novel, The Circular Staircase, the second in the Miss Cornelia Van Gorder series, propelled her to national fame. She was also a prolific short story writer and a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post. In true pioneer fashion, she became the first female war correspondent when she was sent to the Belgian front during World War I.

Rinehart was a pioneer in other ways, too. One of her novels, The Bat (which was made into a silent movie), featured a costumed supercriminal. Sound familiar? Although disputed in various sources, rumor has it that Bob Kane, the creator of the Batman comic, may have used the character as his inspiration for his superhero. Who would have figured a middle aged woman may have been responsible for Batman?

When Rinehart had a radical mastectomy for breast cancer, she went public with her story in an issue of Ladies Home Journal in 1947. She encouraged women to have breast exams at a time when this issue was not talked about in public. She also founded the New York publishing house Farrar & Rinehart with her sons, where she served as director.

One event in Rinehart’s life sounds like it came straight from a mystery novel. She owned a vacation home in Bar Harbor, Maine. One summer, as she sat in her library reading a book, her cook of 25 years entered the room. He walked up to her, pointed a gun at her head and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired and Rinehart ran for help. As she passed the front door to her home, a man standing there told her he was looking for work. She allegedly said, “Young man, you’ll have to come back later. There is a man here trying to kill me.” The cook then tried to attack her with knives, but was subdued by other servants. He committed suicide in jail, and the gracious Rinehart paid for his funeral.

Rinehart was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America in 1953 for her contribution to the field of mystery. She died in 1958 and is buried next to her husband in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Pittsburgh chapter is proud to carry on the legacy of Mary Roberts Rinehart. Please feel free to visit our web site.