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 What Harms You by Lisa Black!
THE PANAMA CANAL. This famous mystery writer received his aviator’s wings while in the U.S. Navy Air Corps and during World War II patrolled the Panama Canal Zone in various aircraft. It was here he started writing to relieve his boredom when he was not flying.
Photo courtesy: ABC News
This famous and prolific crime novelist was born in 1920 in New Haven, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University in 1942 with a bachelor’s degree in art and edited the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. While at Yale, he also boxed and led the chess team. Following graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Air Corps and patrolled the Panama Canal during World War II, flying various aircraft.
When he was not flying and to relieve himself of boredom, he began writing fiction and published his first novel in 1947.
In 1949, after he had already published three private-eye novels, this author said he “chanced upon a slim paperback, They All Died Young: A Case Book of True and Unusual Murders (1949), written by Charles Boswell. It was a collection of ten true murder cases in which victims were young women.” He claimed after reading the book he was “never the same again for the depicted murders were not make-believe, they had really happened.” He, thereafter, determined to write a fictional murder mystery that would “sound as if it had really happened.” A year later, he finished the novel about the murder of a college girl but through the eyes of professional policemen—men who he describes as “struggling, balding, graying, unromantic, plain-looking, ordinary joes”—and how they operate. That form of detective novel became known as a “police procedural.”
Throughout his career, he wrote more than 50 novels, as well as five gothic romances (under a pseudonym), and a nonfiction book about writing mysteries.
He earned several literary awards and served as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Who was this famous author?
Did you guess Dorothy Salisbury Davis last month? Adelia in South Carolina won Dark Waters by Chris Goff!
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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.
Well, as usual, I have no idea who the mystery writer is this month. But I hope one of our readers will know the answer and win a copy of Lisa’s new book as her endeavors are always just terrific.
I really don’t have the answer to the identity of that mystery writer. But I hope one of our readers will know the answer and win a copy of Lisa’s new book as her endeavors are always just terrific.
You make me want to cheat, ZJ. As a mystery writer and reader, I feel like I should know this one. Dang!!