Meny
Portrait image of Helen Reilly

Sample of authors

Reilly, Helen

Critics often regard Helen Reilly as one of the most important female American crime writers of the 1930s. One reason for this distinction is that most of her peers at the time dedicated themselves to romantic suspense, while Reilly instead wrote a series of realistic stories about police work, told from the perspective of the cops themselves. Her main protagonist is inspector McKee of the...

Further reading

Literary figures

John Silence

Gender: Male

Algernon Blackwood wrote only six short stories about John Silence, ‘physician extraordinary’, but the mysterious, rich doctor with unnatural psychic powers is nevertheless a classic as the ‘occult detective’. Inspired by Sherlock Holmes, he uses logical reasoning to expose ‘magical’ criminal deceptions, but uses his psychic ability to solve mysteries – the result is horror fiction with a detectiv...

Further reading