William Edward Vickers (1889 - 1965) was an English mystery writer better known under his pen name Roy Vickers, but he also wrote under the pseudonyms Roy C. Vickers, David Durham, Sefton Kyle, and John Spencer. He is now remembered mostly for his attribution to Scotland Yard of a Department of Dead Ends, specialising in solving old, sometimes long-forgotten cases, mostly by chance encounters of odd bits of strange and apparently disconnected evidence. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and left Brasenose College, Oxford, without a degree. For some time he studied law at the Middle Temple, but never practised. He married Mary Van Rossem and they had one son. He worked as a journalist, court reporter, magazine editor and wrote a large number of non-fiction articles which he sold in the hundreds to newspapers and magazines. Between November 1913 and February 1917, 20 short stories by Vickers were published in the 'Novel Magazine', which he edited. And in 1914 he published his first book, a biography of Field Marshal Frederick, Earl Roberts entitled 'Lord Roberts The Story of His Life'. In September 1934, 'The Rubber Trumpet', the first of 37 stories featuring the fictitious Department of Dead Ends, appeared in Pearson's Magazine. This was subsequently collected with other stories in 'The Department of Dead Ends' (1949). Another series of his books featured his heroine Felicity Dove. In 1960 he edited the Crime Writers' Association's anthology of short stories 'Some Like Them Dead'. The Manchester Evening News called one of his collections, 'one of the half-dozen successful books of detective short stories published since the days of Sherlock Holmes'. Some of his work has been adapted for film such as 'Girl in the News' (1940), 'Violent Moment' (1959) and there were three of his stories used as episodes in television's 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' series (Season 3: 1957-58). He died in Hampstead in 1965. Note: He was born in the first quarter of 1889 and he died in the third quarter of 1965 so the dates of death above reflect that no definite date is known for either event.

Barry Perowne is a pseudonym of Philip Atkey who was born in the New Forest area of Wiltshire. He left school at the age of 14 to work for a carnival equipment manufacturer; he used his experiences in this line of work in his later works on carnival showmen who, with their families and caravans, took up winter quarters in the factory yards. He later became secretary to his uncle Bertram Atkey before editing two magazines that published humorous and romantic fiction. In addition he wrote short stories for several other magazines as well as a couple of novels about Dick Turpin, the highwayman, and Red Jim, the first air detective. By agreement with the E W Hornung estate he continued the Raffles series created by that author. His first stories of the amateur cracksman appeared in the British magazine 'The Thriller' with the sophisticated cracksman's adventures put into contemporary settings. In 1933 he married Bertram Atkey's daughter; their marriage was to produce one daughter and ended in divorce in 1948. He joined the Army in 1940 and served three years in the infantry and three years in the intelligence corps. He continued to write his Raffles stories and many of them appeared in 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'. Fourteen of the best of those stories appeared in 'Raffles Revisited' in 1974, a book which came some 40 years after his first published books about Raffles. His Raffles stories were considered by many critics to be far superior to those of Raffles' creator E W Hornung. He also wrote under his own name, Philip Atkey, and 'Blue Water Murder' (1935), 'Heirs of Merlin' (1945) and 'Juniper Rock' (1952) were the results. He also used the pseudonym Pat Merriman, 'Night Call' (1937) and in addition wrote under his own name, 'Arrest These Men!' (1932) being the first of such productions ... to be followed by many more, ending with 'A Singular Conspiracy', which is a crime fantasy based on an apocryphal meeting between Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire. He died on 24 December 1985.

Anthony Wynne is a pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson, an English physician, who developed a specialism in cardiology after working as an assistant to Sir James Mackenzie, whose biography he subsequently wrote in 1926. He was born in Glasgow, the son of William and Helen Wilson, (née Turner), He was educated at Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University and became House Surgeon at Glasgow Western Infirmary. He was Medical Correspondent of 'The Times' from 1914–1942. He twice stood, unsuccessfully, for Parliament, as liberal candidate for the Saffron Walden district of Essex in 1922 and 1923. He wrote biographies and historical works under his own name and a single novel under the pseudonym Harry Colindale. Under Anthony Wynne, he created Eustace Hailey, a doctor in mental diseases and amateur sleuth, who featured in many of his 45 mystery novels, beginning with 'The Mystery of the Evil Eye' (1925) and ending with 'Death of a Shadow' (1950). As Anthony Wynne he also wrote short stories for a variety of magazines and newspapers. He married Winifred Paynter on 7th December 1905 in Alnwick, Northumberland, and the couple had three sons. In the September quarter of 1928 he married again, Doris May Fischel, at Hampstead and they had two sons. He died in the New Forest, Hampshire, on 29 November 1963.

Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (7 May 1865 Dulwich, London - 22 November 1948 London) was a British author and politician. He is best remembered for his 1902 novel The Four Feathers. He studied at Dulwich College and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford in 1888. He was a contemporary of fellow Liberal Anthony Hope, who went on to write the adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda. His first novel, A Romance of Wastdale, was published in 1895. He was the author of more than 20 books, including At The Villa Rose (1910), a mystery novel in which he introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud. His best-known book is The Four Feathers, which has been made into several films. Many consider it his masterpiece. Other books are The House of the Arrow (1924), No Other Tiger (1927), The Prisoner in the Opal (1929) and Fire Over England (1937).

Dame Ngaio Marsh, born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900, but she was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Of all the "Great Ladies" of the English mystery's golden age, including Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh alone survived to publish in the 1980s. Over a fifty-year span, from 1932 to 1982, Marsh wrote thirty-two classic English detective novels, which gained international acclaim. She did not always see herself as a writer, but first planned a career as a painter. Marsh's first novel, A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), which she wrote in London in 1931-32, introduced the detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn: a combination of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and a realistically depicted police official at work. Throughout the 1930s Marsh painted occasionally, wrote plays for local repertory societies in New Zealand, and published detective novels. In 1937 Marsh went to England for a period. Before going back to her home country, she spent six months travelling about Europe. All her novels feature British CID detective Roderick Alleyn. Several novels feature Marsh's other loves, the theatre and painting. A number are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens), and two others are about actors off stage (Final Curtain and False Scent). Her short story "'I Can Find My Way Out" is also set around a theatrical production and is the earlier "Jupiter case" referred to in Opening Night. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in several later novels. Series: * Roderick Alleyn

Born Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen was born in Dudley near Wolverhampton, England but he grew up in Cookham, Berkshire where his father owned a public house and he was educated at Taplow School, which was run by nuns. The artist Stanley Spencer lived next door to Ernest and his friends included writers and actors such as Ivor Novello and Jack Buchanan and it was the latter who steered young Ernest toward acting (in later life Ernest was to write a stage show for him.) At 17 Ernest ran away to become an actor, joining a company performing Shakespeare in various Irish towns. Ernest was later to say he only went into the theatre to meet girls and in 1930 he married Jane Grahame, who for several years played one of the Lost Boys in 'Peter Pan'. Jane's connections propelled Ernest to the West End, where his good looks secured him juvenile roles: he shared stages with Charles Laughton, Madeleine Carroll and Fay Compton. And Jane and Ernest took the leads in the first British touring production of Noel Coward's 'Private Lives' by which time their only child, a daughter named Susan, had been born. Considering himself only a mediocre actor he moved into journalism and as "Charles Ton", a 'Daily Mail' showbusiness gossip columnist, he frequented the Embassy and the Café de Paris, where he got to know many Soho people and even met Fred Astaire when he was starring in 'The Gay Divorcee' at the Palace Theatre. He later covered boxing for 'The People' and then his first novel 'Mr Walker Wants to Know' (1939) came along; it was a spin-off from a radio series he scripted. He also wrote scripts for Twentieth Century Fox and British International Pictures, but by the outbreak of war he and Jane were working fulltime on live weekly shows for BBC Light Entertainment.. He was not considered fit enough for active service so he continued to work for the BBC before, in 1942 his famous creation, the sinister and sarcastic Dr Morelle, debuted on the magazine-cum-anthology show Monday Night at Eight. His first Dr Morelle novel, 'Meet Dr Morelle' followed in 1943', the first of 15 novels starring the doctor, who it was said was based on film actor and director Erich von Stroheim, whom Ernest had met briefly in Paris in the 1930s. With his secretary Miss Frayle - a part written specially for Jane - Dr Morelle featured in novels, short stories, a film - 'The Case of the Missing Heiress' (1949), a play and three radio serials. In 1942 Ernest also got his own hugely popular 'Armchair Detective' series, and in 1952 came a film of the Armchair Detective, featuring Ernest. Ernest crossed easily to television and in the late 1950s came Judge for Yourself - trials where the audience was the jury. Historical and detective novels were followed by works such as 'Confessions of a Special Agent' (1957), featuring the exploits of Jack Evans; 'The Gilded Lillie' (1958), a biography of Lillie Langtry; and 'Monsters of the Purple Twilight', (1960) a history of the Zeppelin. Then he started on true stories of various animals. Amazingly, in his late 60s Ernest took up marathon running, which, he claimed, helped with his depression. He ran four in London, two in New York and his book 'Run for Your Life' (1985) described these experiences and his training methods. It is said that he was still jogging in Regents Park as late as 2005! He was a lifetime member of Equity, and he was a founder member of the Crime Writers Association in the 1950s. In his mid-90s his career was revitalised by a new agent, and American and Canadian publishers were reprinting his work of the 1950s and 60s. He was also working on a new book - 'Dr Morelle and the LapDancer' - which subsequently did not materialise. Apparently he was a shy man and he was happy alone (his wife Jane died in 1981) in his tiny, book-littered Marylebone flat. He had not a single comfortable armchair but had two desks, 70 years' worth of diaries and lots of pictures (several his own work), many

Full name: Emma ("Emmuska") Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-British novelist, best remembered as the author of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905). Baroness Orczy's sequels to the novel were less successful. She was also an artist, and her works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Her first venture into fiction was with crime stories. Among her most popular characters was The Old Man in the Corner, who was featured in a series of twelve British movies from 1924, starring Rolf Leslie. Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales. Orczy's first detective stories appeared in magazines. As a writer she became famous in 1903 with the stage version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Julian Gustave Symons is primarily remembered as a master of the art of crime writing. However, in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and he held a distinguished reputation in each field. His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writer. Symons held a number of positions prior to becoming a full-time writer including secretary to an engineering company and advertising copywriter and executive. It was after the end of World War II that he became a free-lance writer and book reviewer and from 1946 to 1956 he wrote a weekly column entitled "Life, People - and Books" for the Manchester Evening News. During the 1950s he was also a regular contributor to Tribune, a left-wing weekly, serving as its literary editor. He founded and edited 'Twentieth Century Verse', an important little magazine that flourished from 1937 to 1939 and he introduced many young English poets to the public. He has also published two volumes of his own poetry entitled 'Confusions about X', 1939, and 'The Second Man', 1944. He wrote hie first detective novel, 'The Immaterial Murder Case', long before it was first published in 1945 and this was followed in 1947 by a rare volume entitled 'A Man Called Jones' that features for the first time Inspector Bland, who also appeared in Bland Beginning. These novles were followed by a whole host of detective novels and he has also written many short stories that were regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In additin there are two British paperback collections of his short stories, Murder! Murder! and Francis Quarles Investigates, which were published in 1961 and 1965 resepctively.

Daughter of Capt. George Connolly Benson and Margaret Jones, Marguerite was adopted by Joseph and Margaret Jane Steen. Educated at a private school and subsequently, with much more success, at Kendal High School, at 19 she became a teacher in a private school. After three years she abandoned that career and went to London to fulfill her ambition of working in the theatre. Failing to gain entry to the theatrical world, she accepted instead an offer to teach dance in Yorkshire schools. This earned her a comfortable living (rising to over £500 a year) which enabled her to spend long periods travelling in France and Spain—the latter becoming her adopted homeland. In 1921, she joinrf the Fred Terry/Julia Neilson drama company, at £3 per week, and spent three years touring with them. She was befriended by Ellen Terry, and when she found herself unemployed in 1926, took her advice and wrote The Gilt Cage, published in 1927. She went to write 40 more books. Her first major success was Matador (1934), for which she drew on her love of Spain, and of bullfighting. This was picked up by both the Book Society in Britain, and the Book of the Month Club in the USA. Also a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic was her massive saga of the slave-trade and Bristol shipping, The Sun Is My Undoing (1941); this was the first part of a trilogy, but the remaining volumes were far less popular.[5] Though never quite accepted by literary critics, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1951. Her two volumes of autobiography, Looking Glass (1966) and Pier Glass (1968) offer some delightful views of the English creative set from the 1920s to the 1950s.