Connecticut mystery writer Hillary Waugh was one of the pioneers of the American police procedural novel. He died on Dec. 8th at the age of 88.
Waugh's 1952 novel Last Seen Wearing was listed by the Mystery Writers of America as one of the top 100 mysteries of all time and in 1989 he was named a Grand Master by the MWA.
He used Connecticut as the setting for many of his stories, and had an eleven title series which featured Fred Fellows, chief of police in Stockford, a fictional small town.
Michael Crichton, whose main body of writing epitomized the techno-thriller genre, died on November 4th at the age of 66. He won an Edgar Award in 1969 for the mystery novel A Case of Need which he wrote under the pseudonym of Jeffery Hudson. Crichton also wrote eight mysteries as John Lange.
Crichton considered his thrillers cautionary science tales. His book The Andromeda Strain, published in 1969 while he was still a medical student at Harvard Medical School.
The mystery world also lost award-winning author Tony Hillerman on October 26th at the age of 83. Hillerman was .best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels, some of which were made into big-screen and television movies.
His mysteries, set in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona, explore the interaction of traditional Navajo culture with the belagaana, or white man.
Hillerman was named a Grand Master in 1991.
The creator of the humorous Fletch mysteries, Gregory Mcdonald, died on September 7th at the age of 71. Irwin Maurice Fletcher, an investigative reporter turned beach bum, appears in nine novels and Fletch was later played by Chevy Chase in the movie of the same name.
Two of the Fletch books were Edgar winners. The first book, Fletch, was named Best First Novel in 1975, and Confess, Fletch won for Best Paperback Original in 1977, the only time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back Edgars.
Best-selling author Phyllis A. Whitney, dubbed "The Queen of the American Gothics" by the New York Times, died on February 8th at the age of 104.
She wrote mysteries for both adults and children, often set in exotic locales, and won an Edgar for Best Juvenile Novel in 1961 for The Mystery of the Haunted Pool and again in 1988 for The Mystery of the Hidden Hand.
The prolific Whitney wrote 76 books and more than 50 million copies of her books are in print in paperback alone. Whitney was named a Grand Master in 1988.
Margaret Truman, who died on January 29th at the age of 83, wrote a critically acclaimed full length biography of her father, Harry S. Truman in 1972 as well as twenty four critically successful murder mysteries set in various locations in and around Washington, D.C. -- although there have been assertions that these were ghost-written.
I once heard her address the American Library Association after the first few books were in print and when someone in the audience asked when she was going to set one of her mysteries at the Library of Congress -- ever the politician’s daughter -- she replied that she could never, ever, kill off a librarian.
There was, eventually, Murder at the Library of Congress in 1999, but if memory serves me correctly, it was a free-lance researcher who was murdered, not a member of the staff. Thank you, Margaret!
