Showing results by publisher "Deadtree Publishing" in Crime Fiction

Murder is that most heinous of crimes. But some murderers simply can’t get enough of it. Beneath the well-known monsters such as Lecter there lurk those other evil-doers who are the vivid confessions of our classic authors.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 22nd May 1859. His literary career burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis, Moriarty.

Susan Keating Glaspell was born on July 1st, 1876 in Davenport, Iowa. Glaspell, a precocious child, was an active student at Davenport High School. By 18 she was earning a salary at the local newspaper as a journalist, and by 20 she was the author of a weekly 'Society' column. With her husband Glaspell founded the Provincetown Playhouse for plays that reflected contemporary issues. Her first play, ‘Trifles’ (1916), was based on the murder trial she covered as a young reporter and later adapted as the short story ‘A Jury of Her Peers’. S

21st Precinct was a very dramatic police drama and based on the workings of a true life police department, described in the programme as 'just lines on a map of the city of New York, most of the 173,000 people wedged into the nine-tenths of a square mile between 5th Ave and the East River wouldn't know if you ask them they lived or worked in the 21st. Whether they know it or not, the security of their persons, their homes, and their property is the job of the men of the 21st'.

Cop shows have been a staple of the media almost from the beginning. These fictional accounts created the easy-to-understand formula of ‘diabolical crime plus brilliant detective equals the sometimes not-so-obvious solution'. But in the early years of the 1950s something radically different came along. 21st Precinct was a very dramatic police drama and based on the workings of a true life police department.

Cop shows have been a staple of the media almost from the beginning. These fictional accounts created the easy-to-understand formula of 'diabolical crime plus brilliant detective equals the sometimes not-so-obvious solution'. But in the early years of the 1950s something radically different came along. 21st Precinct was a very dramatic police drama and based on the workings of a true life police department.

Some people have basic needs of foods and materials that only theft can provide an answer for, and some others just pursue the taking of what they want, whenever they want and from whoever they want. These are their stories.

Leonora Rowley was born in Nottingham in 1904, although some sources cite 1905. In September 1914 the famed British humourist P G Wodehouse married her mother, Ethel, and consequently legally adopted the young Leonora. Leonora Wodehouse died on the 16th May 1944 after undergoing minor gynaecological surgery. A German bombing raid near her hospital had overwhelmed it with casualties. Sadly no one was able to respond to her calls for attention to stem her post-op bleeding. She was 39.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language. He began his first foray as a fabulist, publishing ‘Fantastic Fables’ in 1899. But tragedy struck two years later when his second son Leigh died of pneumonia relating to his alcoholism. He continued to write short stories and poetry and also published ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’.

Edna Worthley Underwood was born in Maine in 1873. Her first published work was a collaborative translation of materials by Nikolai Gogol. Her talents included both translating (she was an expert linguist), poetry and noted author of short stories. By the 1940’s her literary efforts ceased and, after being admitted to a sanitorium for dementia in 1953, died several years later.

William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married.