Helen McCloy
Encyclopedia
Helen McCloy pseudonym Helen Clarkson, was an American
mystery
writer, whose series character Dr. Basil Willing debuted in Dance of Death (1938). Willing believes, that "every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints, and he can't wear gloves to hide them." He appeared in 13 of McCloy's novels and in several of her short stories. McCloy often used the theme of doppelganger
, but in the end of the story she showed a psychological or realistic explanation for the seemingly supernatural events.
. Her mother was the writer Helen Worrell McCloy and father, William McCloy, was the longtime managing editor of the New York Evening Sun. She was educated at the Brooklyn Friends School
, run by Brooklyn
's Quaker community. In 1923 she went to France
and studied at the Sorbonne
. After finishing her studies, she worked for William Randolph Hearst
's Universal News Service (1927 - 1932). Then she was an art critic for International Studio and other magazines, and free-lance contributor to London
Morning Post
and Parnassus. She returned to the United States
in 1932.
In 1946 McCloy married Davis Dresser
, who had gained fame with his Mike Shayne novels, written under the pseudonym Brett Halliday. She founded with Dressler the Torquil Publishing Company and a literary agency (Halliday and McCloy). Their marriage ended in 1961. In the 1950s and 1960s McCloy was a co-author of review column for Connecticut
newspapers and in 1950 she became the first woman to serve as president of Mystery Writers of America
. In 1954 she received Edgar
from the same organization for her critics. McCloy helped to found in 1971 a New England
chapter of the Mystery Writers of America
in Boston
.
as a young girl, McCloy retained an interest in mysteries and began to write them in the 1930s. Her first novel, Dance of Death, was published in 1938. It was followed by several other mystery publications in the 1940s. Cue for Murder (1942) was a story of murder onstage during a Broadway
revival of Sardou's Fédora. The One That Got Away
(1945) explored the psychology
of Fascism
, postulating that it is rooted in woman hatred, and rejection of a mother's tender care of children. A non-Willing mystery, Panic
(1944), was set in a remote cottage in the Catskills and was notable for its use of cryptoanalysis.
In Mr. Splitfoot (1968) Dr. Willing and his wife to take shelter at a remote house in New England, where they must lodge in a haunted room. The title refers to the Devil, but Mr Splitfoot is also a symbol for the two sides of our nature, as Willing points out. The critic and mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included the work in 1987 among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published.
Another masterpiece is the eighth Basil Willing novel, Through a Glass, Darkly (1950), a supernatural puzzle in the tradition of John Dickson Carr
. "If you want to scare yourself still in bed, it's just the thing for you," the English writer Pamela Hansford Johnson
said of the book. Boucher
and McComas
praised the novel as "an eerie study of the phenomenon of the Doppelganger
, . . . handled with such disquieting ambivalence that the 'rational' solution seems only an instance of man's folly in the face of the unknowable.".
In The Impostor (1977) a woman, Marina, recovers consciousness after a car crash to find herself in a psychiatric clinic. She recalls the accident clearly but she's told that all is her delusion. A man arrives, not her husband, but the get away she accepts the impostor. McCloy used in the story a cryptological double bluff. She had read about it in 1944 when she was writing Panic, but because she was unable to trace the source, she improvised her own version of it.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
writer, whose series character Dr. Basil Willing debuted in Dance of Death (1938). Willing believes, that "every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints, and he can't wear gloves to hide them." He appeared in 13 of McCloy's novels and in several of her short stories. McCloy often used the theme of doppelganger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
, but in the end of the story she showed a psychological or realistic explanation for the seemingly supernatural events.
Biography
Helen McCloy was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Her mother was the writer Helen Worrell McCloy and father, William McCloy, was the longtime managing editor of the New York Evening Sun. She was educated at the Brooklyn Friends School
Brooklyn Friends School
Brooklyn Friends School is a Quaker school in New York City. Brooklyn Friends School is an independent, college preparatory Quaker school serving a culturally diverse educational community of approximately 700 students, ages 20 months through 12th grade.-History:Founded in 1867 by the Religious...
, run by Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
's Quaker community. In 1923 she went to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and studied at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
. After finishing her studies, she worked for William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's Universal News Service (1927 - 1932). Then she was an art critic for International Studio and other magazines, and free-lance contributor to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
Morning Post
Morning Post
The Morning Post, as the paper was named on its masthead, was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.- History :...
and Parnassus. She returned to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1932.
In 1946 McCloy married Davis Dresser
Brett Halliday
Brett Halliday , primary pen name of Davis Dresser, was an American mystery writer, best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne novels he wrote, and later commissioned others to write...
, who had gained fame with his Mike Shayne novels, written under the pseudonym Brett Halliday. She founded with Dressler the Torquil Publishing Company and a literary agency (Halliday and McCloy). Their marriage ended in 1961. In the 1950s and 1960s McCloy was a co-author of review column for Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
newspapers and in 1950 she became the first woman to serve as president of Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
. In 1954 she received Edgar
Edgar
Edgar is a common name from Old English words ead + gar . Literally meaning "prosperity-spear" or "prosperous spearman." It may refer to:-Historical:...
from the same organization for her critics. McCloy helped to found in 1971 a New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
chapter of the Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
.
Writing career
Having read Sherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
as a young girl, McCloy retained an interest in mysteries and began to write them in the 1930s. Her first novel, Dance of Death, was published in 1938. It was followed by several other mystery publications in the 1940s. Cue for Murder (1942) was a story of murder onstage during a Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
revival of Sardou's Fédora. The One That Got Away
The One That Got Away
The One That Got Away is a 1957 World War II film starring Hardy Krüger and featuring Michael Goodliffe, Jack Gwillim and Alec McCowen. It was directed by Roy Ward Baker with a screenplay written by Howard Clewes...
(1945) explored the psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
of Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, postulating that it is rooted in woman hatred, and rejection of a mother's tender care of children. A non-Willing mystery, Panic
Panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reaction...
(1944), was set in a remote cottage in the Catskills and was notable for its use of cryptoanalysis.
In Mr. Splitfoot (1968) Dr. Willing and his wife to take shelter at a remote house in New England, where they must lodge in a haunted room. The title refers to the Devil, but Mr Splitfoot is also a symbol for the two sides of our nature, as Willing points out. The critic and mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included the work in 1987 among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published.
Another masterpiece is the eighth Basil Willing novel, Through a Glass, Darkly (1950), a supernatural puzzle in the tradition of John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn....
. "If you want to scare yourself still in bed, it's just the thing for you," the English writer Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pamela Hansford Johnson, Baroness Snow was an English novelist, playwright, poet, literary and social critic.-Career:...
said of the book. Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
and McComas
J. Francis McComas
Jesse Francis McComas was an American science fiction editor. McComas wrote several stories on his own in the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe....
praised the novel as "an eerie study of the phenomenon of the Doppelganger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
, . . . handled with such disquieting ambivalence that the 'rational' solution seems only an instance of man's folly in the face of the unknowable.".
In The Impostor (1977) a woman, Marina, recovers consciousness after a car crash to find herself in a psychiatric clinic. She recalls the accident clearly but she's told that all is her delusion. A man arrives, not her husband, but the get away she accepts the impostor. McCloy used in the story a cryptological double bluff. She had read about it in 1944 when she was writing Panic, but because she was unable to trace the source, she improvised her own version of it.
Series of Dr. Basil Willing
- Dance of Death (1938)
- The Man in the Moonlight (1940)
- The Deadly Truth (1941)
- Who's Calling (1942)
- Cue for Murder (1942)
- The Goblin Market (1943)
- The One That Got Away (1945)
- Through a Glass, Darkly (1950)
- Alias Basil Willing (1951)
- The Long Body (1955)
- Two-Thirds of a Ghost (1956)
- Mr. Splitfoot (1968)
- Burn This (1980)
- The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing (Short Stories) (2003)
Non-series
- Do Not Disturb (1943)
- Panic (1944)
- She Walks Alone (1948)
- Better Off Dead (1951)
- Unfinished Crime (1954)
- The Slayer and the Slain (1957)
- Before I Die (1963)
- The Singing Diamonds and Other Stories (Short Stories) (1965)
- The Further Side of Fear (1967)
- A Question of Time (1971)
- A Change of Heart (1973)
- The Sleepwalker (1974)
- Minotaur Country (1975)
- The Changeling Conspiracy uk title: Cruel as the grave(1976)
- The Impostor (1977)
- The Smoking Mirror (1979)
External links
- Helen McCloy - pseudonym Helen Clarkson, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hmccloy.htm