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Gladys Mitchell (Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell) Biography

(1901–83), (Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell), Speedy Death, Laurels Are Poison, Tom Brown's Body



British crime writer and schoolteacher, born in Cowley, Oxfordshire. She published some seventy detective stories, beginning with Speedy Death (1929), in all of which the central figure is the psychiatrist Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley. Though her work has its partisans, others find that the frequent intrusion of the occult—in the shape of witchcraft, the supernatural, or folk superstitions—detracts from its merit as detective fiction. Her best books are perhaps Laurels Are Poison (1942), Tom Brown's Body (1949), Watson's Choice (1955), and Spotted Hemlock (1958). She also wrote several novels as Stephen Hockaby and other crime fiction as Malcolm Torrie.



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Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: McTeague to Nancy [Freeman] Mitford Biography