The life of a mystery writer.

For a few more days, you can listen to episodes from the lively Three-a-Penny read by Diana Quick on BBC 4. It is the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, aka Anthony Gilbert and Anne Meredith. Mystery fans may be most interested in the episode "The Detection Club," in which Malleson describes her induction into that august British body with leading roles played by G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers,  and John Rhode.

Candles at Nine (1944).

In this film, based on The Mouse Who Wouldn't Play Ball (1943) by Detection Club member Anthony Gilbert, a wealthy miser is murdered after tormenting his relatives with speculations about who will receive his money after he dies. The heir is revealed to be an aspiring actress, who must spend a month in the miser's mansion to receive her inheritance. But there are those who are disgruntled by the chosen heir and retaliate.

They Met in the Dark (1943).

James Mason in
They Met in the Dark

Based on The Vanishing Corpse (1941) by the Detection Club's Anthony Gilbert, They Met in the Dark features James Mason, Joyce Howard, and David Farrar in a tale of a disgraced naval officer, murder, and wartime espionage.

John Creasey's Gideon's Day now on DVD.

Jack Hawkins in Gideon's Day (1958)

As this NYT review discussed, the new John Ford boxed set from Turner Classic Movies includes Gideon's Day (aka Gideon of Scotland Yard, 1958), the film of John Creasey's important police procedural (1955) that features Jack Hawkins as Chief Inspector George Gideon, Anna Lee as his wife, and Anna Massey as his daughter. Cyril Cusack and Miles Malleson (cousin of mystery author Anthony Gilbert) also appear in the film.

Evelyn Waugh: Perry Mason fan.

A few interesting tidbits posted on the Web site of the Royal Society of Literature:

Erle Stanley Gardner

• A piece by Linda Kelly on detective fiction that discusses Evelyn Waugh's fondness for Perry Mason, his letter to Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner, and Gardner's reply. (See also Alfred Borrello's article "Evelyn Waugh and Erle Stanley Gardner" from the winter 1970 Evelyn Waugh Newsletter.) In the web of relationships, Waugh was a cousin of mystery novelist Sarah Caudwell.

• P. D. James and Ruth Rendell on mystery writing after Agatha Christie. Among other topics, James discusses the road to publication for Cover Her Face, indicating that it started with meeting actor-writer Miles Malleson (a cousin of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, aka mystery author Anthony Gilbert).

•  A discussion (on audio) with Daphne Park (MI6 operative and principal of Somerville College, Oxford), including readings from Ian Fleming's work by Lucy Fleming (his niece).

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.

U-Chicago's Popular Literature Collection.

Univ of Chicago Library's Special Collections finished an inventory last year of its Popular Literature Collection, which includes about 2000 paperbacks and science fiction magazines, some with lurid

Portrait of Anthony Berkeley Cox
by George Morrow
from Jugged Journalism (1925)

covers. Now, finally, the finding aid is online. Books in the collection include Trial and Error (1945 ed.; film 1941) by Anthony Berkeley [Cox], Death in the Blackout (1946) by Anthony Gilbert, Of Tender Sin (1952) by David Goodis, The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher (1944) by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue), Bimini Run (1952) by E. Howard Hunt (yes, the Watergate figure), Dread Journey (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes, Wall of Eyes (1943) by Margaret Millar, and She Faded into Air (1941) by Ethel Lina White (best known for The Lady Vanishes). Some covers from the collection are posted here.

AKA: Five pseudonymous female mystery authors.

M. C. Beaton. The lighthearted Beaton mysteries feature dour Scottish constable Hamish MacBeth (adapted for television) and the always-in-trouble Agatha Raisin (adapted for radio with Penelope Keith), but under Beaton's real name, Marion Chesney, other mysteries have appeared (such as the Edwardian-set Snobbery with Violence) as well as romance novels.

Italian ed. of David Frome's
The Hammersmith Murders

David Frome/Leslie Ford. Zenith Jones Brown began her mystery career with Murder of an Old Man (1929) under the pseudonym David Frome, followed by more than 15 Frome mysteries and more than 30 mysteries under the name Leslie Ford. Her sleuths include Mr. Pinkerton, Inspector Bull, Colonel Pickering, and Grace Latham. The bookstore Mystery Loves Company selected Ford's Girl from the Mimosa Club (1957) as one of the best mysteries of the 20th century.

Nina Foch in
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945),
based on Anthony Gilbert's
The Woman in Red (1943)

Anthony Gilbert. Lucy Beatrice Malleson, a relative of actor Miles Malleson (Kind Hearts and Coronets, etc.), wrote 32 books under the four pseudonyms of Anne Meredith, J. Kilmeny Keith, Sylvia Denys Hooke, and Lucy Egerton. However, vulgar lawyer Arthur Crook is the star of most of the 60 novels under Malleson's pen name of Anthony Gilbert. Crook debuted in Murder by Experts (1936); the final Gilbert book was A Nice Little Killing (1974). A Detection Club member, she was an Edgar nominee for "Door to a Different World" (EQMM Mar. 1970) and "Fifty Years After" (EQMM Mar. 1973).

Evelyn Piper. Merriam Modell, wife of a Cornell pharmacology professor, wrote stories for the New Yorker and the novel The Sound of Years (1946), but it was under the name Evelyn Piper that she published her most well-known work: Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957, film 1965). Other Piper books include the Edgar-nominated The Innocent (1949), the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work The Motive (1950; called by the New York Times "a fine study in the detection not of who, but of why"), The Plot (1951), The Lady and Her Doctor (1956), Hanno's Doll (1961), The Naked Murderer (1962), The Nanny (1964, film 1965), and The Stand-In (1970).

Peter Vaughan in
Die! Die! My Darling
(1965), based on
Anne Blaisdell's Edgar-
nominated Nightmare

Dell Shannon. Illinois-born author Elizabeth Linington wrote under the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Egan O'Neill, and Leslie Egan, as well as her own name; her police procedurals under the name Dell Shannon feature the LAPD's Luis Mendoza, including the Edgar-nominated novels Case Pending (1960) and Knave of Hearts (1962).