Authorz

Leslie Charteris (born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of his charming hero Simon Templar, alias "The Saint".

Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, in Singapore. His mother, Lydia Florence Bowyer, was English. His father, Dr S. C. Yin (Yin Suat Chwan, 1877–1958), was a Chinese physician who claimed to be able to trace his lineage back to the emperors of the Shang dynasty.

Leslie became interested in writing at an early age. At one point, he created his own magazine with articles, short stories, poems, editorials, serials, and even a comic strip. He attended Saint Andrew's School, Singapore, and after moving to England, Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire.

Archer Mayor is an American author. He wrote the Joe Gunther detective series. Mayor is a Yale graduate and lives in Newfane, Vermont.

Mayor's first Joe Gunther novel Open Season was published in 1988.

Jacqueline Winspear is a mystery writer, author of the Maisie Dobbs series of books exploring the aftermath of World War I. She has won several mystery writing awards for books in this popular series.

John D. Voelker, also known by his pen name Robert Traver, was a noted lawyer, author and fly fisherman from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Born and raised in Ishpeming, he later attended the University of Michigan Law School. His early professional career was as an attorney and county prosecutor in Marquette County. Voelker was also appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court by Governor G. Mennen Williams in 1957. He is best known as the author of the novel Anatomy of a Murder, published in 1958. The best-selling novel was turned into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name—directed by Otto Preminger and starring James Stewart—released on July 1, 1959. Duke Ellington wrote the music for the movie. It is critically acclaimed as one of the best trial movies of all time.

Louise Penny is a Canadian author of mystery novels set in the Canadian province of Quebec centred on the work of francophone Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny's first career was as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). After she turned to writing, she won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2007–2010), and the Anthony Award for best novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2010–2013). Her novels have been published in 23 languages.

Penny was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1958. Her mother was an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular liking for crime fiction, and Louise grew up reading mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Michael Innes.

Craig Allen Johnson is an American author who writes mystery novels. He is best known for his Sheriff Walt Longmire novel series. The books are set in northern Wyoming, where Longmire is sheriff of the fictional county of Absaroka. The series debuted in 2004 and as of September 2021, Johnson has written 18 novels, two novellas, and many short stories featuring Longmire. Some of the novels have been on The New York Times Best Seller list. In 2012, Warner Horizon adapted the main characters and the Wyoming settings of the novels for a television series. Johnson lives at a ranch where he built a residence in the small town of Ucross, Wyoming—population 25.

Mary, Lady Stewart was a British novelist who developed the romantic mystery genre, featuring smart, adventurous heroines who could hold their own in dangerous situations. She also wrote children's books and poetry, but may be best known for her Merlin series, which straddles the boundary between the historical novel and fantasy.

James Lee Burke is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won Edgar Awards for Black Cherry Blues (1990) and Cimarron Rose (1998), and has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin and then Tommy Lee Jones.

David Baldacci is an American novelist. An attorney by education, Baldacci writes mainly suspense novels and legal thrillers.

Herman Raucher is an American author and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the autobiographical screenplay and novel Summer of '42, which became one of the highest-grossing films and one of the best selling novels of the 1970s, respectively. He began his writing career during the Golden Age of Television, when he moonlighted as a scriptwriter while working for a Madison Avenue advertising agency. He effectively retired from writing in the 1980s after a number of projects failed to come to fruition, though his books remain in print and a remake of one of his films, Sweet November, was produced in 2001.

Robert Brown Parker was an American writer, primarily of fiction within the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies was also produced based on the character. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited as influencing their own work and reviving and changing the detective genre by critics and bestselling authors including Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane.

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring the police commander and poet, Adam Dalgliesh.

James was born in Oxford, the daughter of Sidney Victor James, a tax inspector, and his wife, Dorothy Mary James. She was educated at the British School in Ludlow and Cambridge High School for Girls. Her mother was committed to a mental hospital when James was in her mid-teens.

She had to leave school at the age of sixteen to work to take care of her younger siblings, sister Monica, and brother Edward, because her family did not have much money and her father did not believe in higher education for girls. She worked in a tax office in Ely for three years and later found a job as an assistant stage manager for the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. She married Ernest Connor Bantry White (called "Connor"), an army doctor, on 8 August 1941. They had two daughters, Clare and Jane.

Richard Stanley Francis was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England.

John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916 – December 28, 1986) was an American writer of novels and short stories. He is known for his thrillers.

MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many set in his adopted home of Florida. One of the most successful American novelists of his time, MacDonald sold an estimated 70 million books. His best-known works include the popular and critically acclaimed Travis McGee series and his 1957 novel The Executioners, which was filmed as Cape Fear (1962) and remade in 1991.

MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where his father, Eugene Macdonald, worked for the Savage Arms Corporation. The family relocated to Utica, New York in 1926, his father becoming treasurer of the Utica office of Savage Arms. In 1934, MacDonald was given a choice by his father: spend another year in school as a post-graduate, or go to Europe for several weeks. He chose Europe and this began an interest in travel and photography.

John Dunning (born January 9, 1942) is an American writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. He is known for his reference books on old-time radio and his series of mysteries featuring Denver bookseller and ex-policeman Cliff Janeway.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942, Dunning moved to his father's hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of three. In 1964 he left his parents' home and moved to Denver, Colorado, where, after a time working as a stable hand at a horse racing track, he got a job at The Denver Post. In 1970 he left the newspaper and took up writing novels, while pursuing a variety of jobs. Partly because of trouble with his publishers, in 1984 he stopped writing and opened a store specializing in second-hand and rare books called the Old Algonquin Bookstore. At the urging of fellow authors, he returned to the world of novels in 1992 with his first Cliff Janeway novel, Booked to Die. In 1994 he closed the store and continued it as an internet and mail order business called Old Algonquin Books.

Mary Margaret Truman Daniel (February 17, 1924 – January 29, 2008) was an American classical soprano, actress, journalist, radio and television personality, writer, and New York socialite. She was the only child of President Harry S. Truman and First Lady Bess Truman. While her father was president, during the years 1945 to 1953, Margaret regularly accompanied him on campaign trips, most notably the 1948 extensive countrywide train-borne 'Whistle-stop' campaign trip, which lasted several weeks; she also appeared often at important White House and political events during those years. She was a favorite with the media.

After graduating from George Washington University in 1946, she embarked on a career as a coloratura soprano, beginning with a concert appearance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947. She appeared in concerts with orchestras throughout the United States and in recitals throughout the U.S. through 1956. She made recordings for RCA Victor, and made television appearances on programs like What's My Line? and The Bell Telephone Hour.

Paul Doiron (pronounced ) is the author of the Mike Bowditch series of crime novels.

The first book in the Mike Bowditch series, The Poacher's Son, won the Barry Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel. It was a nominee for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel PopMatters included it in its Best Fiction of 2010 list.

Doiron's second book Trespasser won the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.

His novelette "Rabid" was a finalist for the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.

His twelfth novel Dead by Dawn won the 2022 New England Society Book Award for Fiction, the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction and was a finalist for the 2022 Barry Award for Best Thriller.

Thomas Perry (born 1947) is an American mystery and thriller novelist. He received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel.

Perry's work has covered a variety of fictional suspense starting with The Butcher's Boy, which received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel, followed by Metzger's Dog, Big Fish, Island, and Sleeping Dogs. He then launched the critically acclaimed Jane Whitefield series: Vanishing Act (chosen as one of the "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association), Dance for the Dead, Shadow Woman, The Face Changers, Blood Money, Runner, and Poison Flower.