Writers Born Today - Nedra Tyre

It's the birthday of Nedra Tyre, born October 6, 1912 in Offerman, Georgia. She was a social worker for most of her life and she used her experiences to create some of the best suspense fiction of the post war era. She produced six novels and over forty short stories, according to Sarah Weinman, crime fiction critic and leading authority on the genre know as Domestic Suspense.

Anthony Boucher referred to her as not just a mystery writer, but a novelist. He said that she "brings to the mystery novel a richness of human warmth, sympathy, and insight comparable to Dorothy Salisbury Davis or Margaret Millar...".

She read voraciously and squeezed her writing in between work and caring for an ailing mother.  In the 1970s she lost her hearing and became absorbed by the charity work she was doing for the poor. Her work fell out of print. She stopped writing.

One of her best short stories, A Nice Place To Stay, was republished in 2013 in the critically acclaimed anthology, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, edited by Sarah Weinman. The story examines a woman's struggle to support herself with the menial jobs available to her, and the solace she finds when her final destination gives her a measure of security and stability in a prison cell.

The Independent made her the subject of it's famed Invisible Ink series in December 2014, with No. 254.

"Some of the finest writing ever done has been in mysteries --even your precious Henry James tried them."

             - Nedra Tyre, Mouse In Eternity 

Writers Born Today - Barbara Callahan

It's the birthday of Barbara Callahan, born September 20, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating college she became a teacher and later a technical writer. Most of her energy went into raising a family (she had five children). But she began to write in the spare time she could find.

Her contribution to the mystery genre was small in quantity, but not quality. She published 22 short stories during her life. Many of them appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. She's recognized as an important contributor to the mystery genre now known as Domestic Suspense.

Her second story, Lavender Lady, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. It was published in EQMM in April 1976. The haunting tale made such an impression on editor Sarah Weinman that she included it in her 2013 anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives.

My Mother's Keeper, also published in EQMM, was published in 2009 and nominated posthumously for a Barry Award the following year. It was the last story published before her death. You can read it here.


Note: Special thanks to Sarah Weinman, whose research and help made this posting possible.

Writers Born Today - Charlotte Armstrong

It's the birthday of Charlotte Armstrong, born May 2nd 1905 in Vulcan, Michigan. She went to college in Wisconsin but earned her degree in New York City at Barnard College. Her writing career began as a playwright with some of them, including The Happiest Days, being produced on Broadway. But she made her lasting mark as a writer of mystery and suspense.

Charlotte wrote over two dozen novels and numerous stories. A prolific writer, she produced one to two novels a year during the height of her creative powers, and also wrote under the name Jo Valentine. Much of her best fiction revolved around middle class family life whose characters undergo a profound change or shock that leads to chaos. The New York Telegraph called her "the American Queen of suspense novelists".

She was nominated for six Edgar awards, and won in 1957 for her novel A Dram of Poison.

Several of her novels were produced for the big screen, of which two stand out as being notable. The Unsuspected came out as a movie in 1947 starring Claude Rains and was a big hit. In 1952 her novel Mischief was filmed as Don't Bother To Knock, with Anne Bancroft in her debut role and Marilyn Monroe as a demented babysitter. Anthony Boucher was a big fan of her writing, and called Mischief, "an extraordinary achievement, a short but sweet book full of tension".

She also wrote for television and her credits include Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

One of her stories, The Splintered Monday, was included in the 2013 anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, edited by Sarah Weinman.


To read an in-depth review of her novel Mischief, go to Kevin's Corner.

Writers Born Today - Dorothy Salisbury Davis

It's the birthday of Dorothy Salisbury Davis, born April 26th, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois. She was an adopted child, a fact she only learned at the age of 17 and it made a powerful impact on her view of the world.  Before she began her writing career, she worked for a traveling stage magician. The small towns and personalities she encountered helped shape her stories.

Davis has been called one of the original Gone Girls by Sarah Weinman, for her path breaking novels of suspense written during three decades starting in the late 40s.

Her first novel, The Judas Cat, was published in 1949. Black Mask had this to say about it: "Davis in her first crime novel shows a mastery of both plotting and characterization". Anthony Boucher called it a "rewardingly perceptive novel" and thought she had a bright future. He was right. Three more novels followed over the next three years. During her long career she wrote more than 20 novels and story collections.

Dorothy was nominated for the Edgar Award 6 times and was awarded Grand Master in 1985.  She was given lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic.

Ms. Davis was more than just a pioneer on the printed page. When Sisters in Crime was just getting off the ground in the 80s, she served on the steering committee and helped the new organization gain credibility by convincing major women writers such as Mary Higgins Clark to join.

In 2010 the National Book Critics Circle asked its members which books they would most like to see back in print. Sara Paretsky named Dorothy Salisbury Davis, and had this to say about her: "She lived among bootleggers, immigrants, sharecroppers, and itinerant workers in her early years, and there's a richness to her understanding of the human condition that is missing from most contemporary crime fiction."

It looks like Sara got her wish. Open Road Media announced in 2014 that Davis's novels would be re-released. To discover more of her writing, check out her ebooks at Open Road Media.

Davis's short story, Lost Generation, a tale of small town suspicions and paranoia, was included in the excellent 2013 short story collection Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives.

For more about Ms. Davis, check out Weinman's in-depth article at The Daily Beast, The Original Gone Girls: Dorothy Salisbury Davis and Other Forgotten Pioneers of Crime Fiction.

For a bibliography of her work, click here.

You can listen to a brief excerpt from an interview Davis gave to Don Swaim in 1988 about her novel, The Habit of Fear.


Update: Dorothy Salisbury Davis passed away on August 3, 2014 at the age of 98. The New York Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America has published a moving tribute to this amazing writer.

Writers Born Today - Margaret Millar

It's the birthday of Margaret (Sturm) Millar, born February 5, 1915 in Kitchener, Canada. She had less than a typical childhood. Some of her earliest memories involve walking to school past a slaughterhouse, whose stench and sounds of bellowing, dying animals was impossible to ignore. She spent her reading time with the pulp magazine Black Mask, which she devoured with relish. “Some kinds of addiction are considered incurable,” she would say later.

After attending the University of Toronto she married Kenneth Millar, and they moved to California while he served in the navy. She began writing after she was forced to remain in bed following the birth of her daughter. At first, she typed her husband's stories, then began to create her own. Her first novel, The Invisible Worm, was published by Doubleday to critical acclaim. The New Yorker called her "a writer of considerable voltage". She plunged into her second book and never looked back. More psychological thrillers followed, The Devil Loves Me in 1942, Fire Will Freeze in 1944, Do Evil in Return in 1950.

Hollywood bought some of her stories, and she was a favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, who adapted two of her novels, including Beast In View, for his television series.

In 1956, she won an Edgar Award for Beast in View from the Mystery Writers of America. She was the group's President in 1957, and received a Grand Master Award from the MWA in 1983. Her short story, The People Across The Canyon was featured in the recently released anthology, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. It was also reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in the November 2005 issue as a Mystery Classic. You can listen to an audio broadcast of the story here.

Tragedy struck her family later in life. Her daughter died at the age of 31 and her husband suffered from Alzheimer's before his death in 1983. Macular Degeneration took her eyesight. She coped by writing. She told the Los Angeles Times in an interview, "If I couldn't write now I'd probably go off my rocker. Writing keeps me sane--or as sane as I am,"  She died in 1994.

You can read more about her in Kathleen Sharp's article from the LA Review of Books, The Dangerous Housewife, and Sarah Weinman's article in the National Post, Margaret Millar: The Original Canadian Queen of Crime.

Sarah also included Beast In View in a new collection of suspense novels which she edited. Women Crime Writer's of the 1940s and 50s was released last September by the Library of America.

For a Good Time, Pick Up Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives

Sarah Weinman has done us all a favor by rescuing from obscurity some of the finest suspense writers of the post World War II era. Some, like Shirley Jackson, I was already familiar with and need no such saving, but others, such as Nedra Tyre, are new discoveries.

And what discoveries they are. The stories present a wide range of female characters from every socio-economic class, with one thing in common...they're willing to cross the boundaries of acceptable behavior to get what they want. Even if that means murder. Welcome, to Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives.

These writers were working during a time when America was at the height of prosperity and , one assumes, domestic bliss on the home front. After all, the United States had won the war, banished the Axis powers, and was the economic engine driving a global recovery. But not all was Sugar and Spice, as Vera Caspary explains in her sad tale of family rivalry. The men in these stories often little suspect the tensions and deceit simmering below the surface, as we see in The Stranger in the Car. Many of the women in this collection are caregivers, whose financial burdens lead them to take desperate actions. These often result in a shocking end with a surprise twist, as in A Nice Place to Stay and Mortmain.

You'll never look at that nice nurse caring for an aged loved one quite the same way after reading these stories.

If this sampling of suspense leaves you hungry for more, check out Sarah's twitter feed for more top notch writers. It's time to bring these women out of the attic. Sarah Weinman has unlocked the door.

Take a peek. Go ahead...I dare you.