BY Z.J. CZUPOR
ZJ Czupor‘s On Tour with Dead Writers brings us clues to a mystery author each second Tuesday of the month. Dust off your investigative skills and send your answer to mysteryminutecontest@gmail.com by the 20th of the month. From the correct responses, one will be randomly drawn to win a copy of Dark Waters by Chris Goff!
A famous mystery author lived in this Palisades, New York home for 40 years. She was active in local theater and the library. She once said of her home, “I cherish the quiet and the ballet of the trees when the wind blows.”
This mystery author was born in Chicago in 1916 and was raised on farms in Illinois and Wisconsin. At 17 she learned she was adopted. She told crime writer Sara Paretsky when her parents “came to the orphanage…looking for a boy who might grow up to help on the farm, her mother looked down at her cot. She smiled up at her and both parents forgot about wanting a boy.” Although, she said while growing up she did her share of farmwork.
In 1938, this author graduated from Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois with a degree in literature. Afterward, she worked as a magician’s assistant, a job she did not like. Interestingly, her stories often introduce magicians as unsympathetic characters. Later, she worked in public relations, advertising, and as a research librarian and editor of The Merchandiser.
Throughout five decades of writing, she produced twenty novels, including the editing of an anthology published by Mystery Writers of America (which contained none of her stories), submitted original short stories to nine anthologies, and wrote more than thirty short stories.
She was nominated for numerous literary awards and served as a founding member of Sisters in Crime, a writing organization formed in 1986 to represent and advocate for women crime writers.
Her first novel appeared in 1949, but her third, published in 1951, is considered one of the 125 best mysteries ever written.
Who was this famous author?
Did you guess Elizabeth Daly last month? Rose in Pennsylvania in won The Assassins by Gayle Lynds!
Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive an extra clue at the beginning of each month as well as automatic entry to several more monthly Giveaways and first looks at weekly blogs!
Contest rules:
1. All US addresses are eligible to win.
2. Each month’s prize will be a book written by one of the Rogues and donated by that author.
3. All subscribers who email us with the correct answer before the 20th will be entered in a drawing to win.
Z.J. Czupor publishes episodic mysteries and thrillers on Substack at zjames.substack.com.including Cut Right Through Me, When the Fog Rises, and a new series titled Noir in My Car. He’s also the author of THE BIG WEIRD: Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos. Z.J. is immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. He is represented by Terrie Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management. His mystery Elrod is out on submission as well as a nonfiction book about famous mystery writers.
This is such a unique and fun topic, ZJ. Thank you ( ;