Jeffrey Marks is a long-time mystery fan and freelancer. After writing numerous profiles of mystery authors, he chose to chronicle the short but full life of Craig Rice. That biography (Who Was That Lady?) was nominated for every major mystery award. His latest work is a biography of mystery author and critic Anthony Boucher.
He is the long-time moderator of MurderMustAdvertise, an on-line discussion group dedicated to book marketing and public relations and the author of Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel.
Today, he writes from his home in Cincinnati, which he shares with his partner.
What goes up must come down, and Craig Rice’s meteoric rise to the top of the mystery writing heap by 1946 was rivaled only by her rapid descent into semi-obscurity. Her face once graced the cover of Time magazine, but today her books are found in second hand stores.
At the dawn of the Atomic Age, these seven women (Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Mignon Eberhart, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Dorothy Hughes, Charlotte Armstrong, and Leslie Ford) provided extraordinary energy, style, and innovation to mystery fiction.