As an addendum to Monday’s posting about the pseudonyms of mystery writing literary authors, I just encountered a problem with a new book from a “new” author named Inger Ash Wolfe – which the book jacket says “is the pseudonym for a North American literary novelist.”
I did a quick Google to see if I could solve the mystery of her true identity and found out that there is quite a flap in the book world over the name because it turns out there is already a Danish mystery writer named Inger Wolf – no “e” at the end.
Several of the major blogs are abuzz about it. If you want to join the fray, check out Scrivener's Error and Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.
One of the comments posted on Confessions reminds of us a similar debacle in the past. Kenneth Millar started writing books as John Macdonald and then switched to John Ross Macdonald, and finally to just Ross Macdonald when John D. MacDonald cried “foul.”
The title of Wolfe’s book is The Calling. PW called it a “bracingly original mystery” but none of the review journals seem to have picked up on the lack of originality of her name.
In a remote Ontario town, 61-year-old Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is trying to come to terms with a surprise divorce and a critical 87-year-old mother. When a lifelong acquaintance is murdered Hazel and her team are pressed into action, only to find that similar disturbing murders – a serial killer is leaving his victims with faces distorted into screams – are taking place in sleepy hamlets across the wide Canadian expanse.