By ZJ 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 Robert Ludlum’s The Hades Factor by Gayle Lynds!
This famous and prolific crime novelist was born in Liege, Belgium in 1903. Although he never resided in Belgium, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.
At 16, he began his career in journalism with a Belgium newspaper where he learned about crime and police work and wrote nearly one thousand articles under different pseudonyms. At 18, he self-published his first novel. At 19, he moved to Paris with the goal of becoming a successful writer. At 26, he began contributing detective stories to the French magazine Détective.
He worked fast, typing 80 pages a day and published work under 16 different pseudonyms. Between 1923 and 1933, he wrote more than 200 books, which made him a millionaire.
He wrote more than 83 detective novels featuring one of the best-known characters in detective fiction who solved murders using his psychological intuition along with a compassionate understanding of the villain’s motives.
He limited his crime novels to 2,000 words saying they were designed to be read by people of average education in a single setting.
As an ex-journalist, he described towns by their canals and railway lines because he said from there you could look into the back of residents’ lives and not be deceived by the front.
In 2008, The Times named him the second greatest crime writer of all time after Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)
Who was this famous author?
Did you guess Hilary Waugh last month? Liz in California won Not Who We Expected by Lisa Black.
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’s new murder mystery, When The Fog Rises, is published at zjames.substack.com. He’s also the author of the thriller Cut Right Through Me (also at Substack) and a book of poetry 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.
No clue about that mystery writer. But congrats to the winner of the previous one. Always glad to have new readers here on RWW!