Happy birthday, Anthony Gilbert.

David Farrar in They Met
in the Dark (1943;
adapt. of
Anthony Gilbert's
The Vanishing Corpse)

Lucy Beatrice Malleson—aka author Anthony Gilbert, member of the Detection Club, and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson—was born today in Upper Norwood, outside of London, in 1899. She published her first novel, the thriller The Man Who Was London, under the pseudonym J. Kilmeny Keith in 1925. The first Gilbert novel was The Tragedy at Freyne (1927), but the debut of her most well-known character, lawyer Arthur Crook, did not occur until Murder by Experts (1936). He went on to appear in more than 50 other novels, including Out for the Kill (1960). She also wrote an autobiography, Three-a-Penny (1940, under the pseudonym Anne Meredith); radio plays; and well-regarded short stories such as "You Can't Hang Twice" (EQMM, Nov. 1946) and "The Mills of God" (EQMM, Apr. 1969). Malleson died in 1973.