Happy birthday, John P. Marquand.

John P. Marquand, a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Late George Apley (1937) and renowned in mysterydom as the creator of Japanese intelligence officer Mr. Moto, was born today in 1893 in Wilmington, Delaware. Marquand was the nephew of transcendentalist Margaret Fuller and a cousin of architect Buckminster Fuller. By the time of the author's death in 1960, Mr. Moto had appeared in six novels (No Hero; Thank You, Mr. Moto; Think Fast, Mr. Moto; Mr. Moto Is So Sorry; Last Laugh, Mr. Moto; and Stopover: Tokyo) and eight films, and Marquand had produced more than a dozen highly lucrative mainstream novels and a number of short stories.

Sadly, No Hero—Marquand's contribution to the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list—is out of print.