More Golden Age Reissues: The Two Pats, Patricia Wentworth and Patrick Quentin

You may know that Patricia Wentworth wrote a lot of mysteries--in fact a slight majority of her output--without her most famous series character, Miss Silver.  Despite the fact that Patricia Wentworth has maintained a loyal following since her death over half-a-century ago, only a few of these Silverless mysteries have ever been reprinted in that time, until now.  Outside of the US these titles are being reissued by Dean Street Press, in three batches.

Follow this link to see the first group. I wrote an introduction about Wentworth and her life expressly and exclusively for the DSP reissues, which I do hope people will find interesting.

I have also written the introduction to Crippen & Landru's reissue of the complete Peter Duluth short fiction by Patrick Quentin, which consists of two novelettes and two short stories.  Three of these pieces were written in collaboration by Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler, while the last was written solo by Wheeler, after Webb left their home in the Berkshires and moved to France.

There will be yet more about Webb and Wheeler in an essay by me dealing more with their personal lives, in a forthcoming multi-contributor essay collection on LGBTQ writers of and themes in pre-Stonewall crime fiction.  I also have a blog piece on one of Webb and Wheeler's Jonathan Stagge novels coming soon.

Additionally I will be posting here about some of the Wentworths in the first batch of DSP reissues.  I think this is an exciting development in GA mystery reissues, as Wentworth is one of the major figures from Golden Age mystery and most of these titles have been difficult for fans to locate for many years now.

I do hope that the crime novels by Webb and Wheeler will be reissued to go along with this fine Crippen & Landru volume.  Their omission from the recent wave of vintage mystery reprints has been more unfortunate, their work under the Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge pseudonyms being some of the most notable crime fiction of the twentieth century.