Walter Satterthwait’s new crime novel Dead Horse is based on the mysterious death of Raoul Whitfield’s second wife Emily.
Although it was ruled a suicide, the book is built around its somewhat questionable circumstances.
Hard-boiled pulp writer Whitfield was the highest paid mystery writer in America in the 1920s and is believed to be Dashiell Hammett’s model for Nick Charles.
Ironically, the flamboyant Whitfield began his working life as a silent film actor and is said to have closely resembled Cary Grant, right down to the cleft on his chin.
He began his writing career as a newspaper reporter in his native Pittsburgh after serving as an aviator in World War I. His first story for Black Mask appeared in March, 1926.
Five of his stories about an ex-convict named Mel Ourney became the basis of Green Ice, which is perhaps his best-known novel.
Satterthwait’s detective is named Tom Delgado, perhaps in tribute to Whitfield’s character Jo Gar who is acknowledged as the first Latino P.I.
