John Stephen Strange
Personal Information
Description
Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett was born in 1896 in New York, where she lived for most of her life. She published poetry in various magazines in the late 1910's, which were compiled into a book in 1920. She was a playwright of one-acts, often performing in her own plays. In 1928 she began her mystery-writing career with her first novel for the newly formed Crime Club, The Man Who Killed Fortescue. She maintained the secret of her true identity through the 48 years she published her 22 mystery novels under the name John Stephen Strange, finally retiring from writing with the publication of her last novel, The House on 9th Street in 1976. Dorothy died in Connecticut in 1983. [link text]
Books
The clue of the second murder
After leaving his sister's opulent Garden Party in 1927 Greenwich, Connecticut a naval inventor is shot dead while driving his Packard down a country lane beside the estate. Bill Adams, teen sleuth, begins the investigation, calling his friend, Detective Van Dusen Ormsberry home from his vacation in France to prevent an unjust conviction. Ormsberry must wade through the accused's past political scandal; the torrid love triangle of the accused, the stage actress and the victim; and the post-World War I International espionage ring he discovers to find the actual murderer.
The house on 9th Street
In New York City, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the row of handsome brownstones on 9th Street east of Fifth drowsed in the sun, until 12:01 precisely when Number 9 blew up. It was to solve the horrifying, entangled story behind the blast that our old friend Barney Gantt returned after all these years, with his wife, Muriel, the Globe's 'Dorothy darling,' and their friend Magruder, in a story perhaps too typical of our times. As Muriel said to Barney, 'We have a box seat at a new play, and what it's all about we don't know. But you'll find out. You always do.'
The Strangler Fig
In 1922, on his private island off the coast of Florida, on a calm, lovely evening, Senator Stephen Huntington walked out on the terrace for an after-dinner cigar, and was never seen again. Local superstition has it that he was devoured by the strangler fig, a tropical vine that spreads itself onto other plants and kills again and again, slaying relentlessly and without compunction anything that stands in the path of its growth. Seven years later, Bolivar Brown accepts an invitation to vacation on the island with Huntington’s family and some of the Senator’s former friends. When a hurricane batters the island, clean-up crews soon find the dead strangler fig vine wrapped around a body dressed in the Senator’s clothes. That evening another victim is strangled. Bolivar Brown is compelled to discover the truth buried beneath the passions and ambitions of the Senator's former friends before another falls victim to the strangler fig.
Let the Dead Past; Collectors' Item;The Department of Dead Ends
Catch the gold ring
Henri Magritte was a man possessed by one desire: to find the informer who had betrayed his brother. Robert's death at the hands of the Gestapo had so affected him that he had turned his back on his family and friends in Paris, retreating into bitter cynicism. During the seven years following the war, Henri had drifted aimlessly — until Marcelle Duvernoy reappeared in his life. She was even more beautiful than when she had been his mistress during the days of the Resistance. Although she was now married to a wealthy American, some of the magic of their love remained. Suddenly Henri's friend Commissaire Genet of the Paris police hit upon evidence pointing to the identity of a ring of wartime collaborators. Feverishly Henri began working side by side with the police, determined to find the man who had been at the core of the conspiracy. Some of the suspects wept under interrogation. Others boasted freely that they had been responsible for the execution of many Resistance agents. But all said they knew the Gestapo contact only as a voice on the telephone — a man known as "Albert." The telephone number? None could remember. Then it happened. Henri remembered a photograph — remembered it almost subconsciously, as one remembers a face form childhood. And Albert was forced to take an irrevocable step.