Weird Facts About Mystery Authors Quiz

Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) dabbled in the occult at various points in his life. His most notable endeavor was his belief in the Cottingley Fairies who allegedly appeared to young cousins and appeared in photographs. The Cottingley Fairies was later admitted to be a hoax. Doyle worked with a spirit medium to find Agatha Christie when she disappeared in 1926 by providing the medium with one of Christie's gloves. Doyle is also known to be associated with various hoaxes some of which he fell for and some he has been accused of perpetrating, like the Piltdown Man.

Answer: MacBeth

Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) worked extensively in the theater and set many novels there. In her lifetime, she produced many plays and it is for her theatrical work, not her mystery novels, she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Despite spending and dedicating so much of her life to theater, Marsh did not share one specific theatrical superstition - never to say the name MacBeth out loud. Marsh held no such belief about her beloved play being cursed and often said the name MacBeth backstage.

Answer: Heavenly Creatures

Anne Perry (1928-2023) was born Juliet Hulme and is the Hulme in the famous Parker-Hulme murder case in New Zealand. Perry and Pauline Parker, Perry's friend, conspired to murder Parker's mother Honorah Rieper because the two girls created a fantasy world together that was being threatened because Parker was supposed to move to South Africa. Parker and Hulme were imprisoned for five years. Perry's identity as Juliet Hulme wasn't publicly known until 1994 when "Heavenly Creatures" debuted and Perry was furious at the revelation.

However, she later admitted she was surprised her career did not suffer and her friends stuck by her. In the film, Hulme was played by Kate Winslet while Parker was played by Melanie Lynskey.

Answer: Rex Stout

Rex Stout (1886-1975), creator of Nero Wolfe, was a virulent anti-Communist. However, he was also known for opposing the Red Scare and these subjects often found their way into Nero Wolfe's cases. Specifically, Stout was an opponent of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Stout found himself accused of being a Communist and in front of Martin Dies, Chairman of the Committee on Un-American Activities, fought back.

Many of Stout's Nero Wolfe novels were politically charged and often dealt with Communism and the forces opposing Communism with Stout often depicting both sides negatively.

Answer: Hurdles

Despite being a very successful writer, Gladys Mitchell taught at two different girls schools for nearly twenty years at the height of her career. Mitchell wrote 66 mystery novels featuring Mrs. Bradley, including at least one a year from 1934 until her death in 1983 aged 82 years.

She taught English and history, was active in the schools' theater programs and coached hurdles as part of track and field. Mitchell was considered one of the Queens of Crime in her early career but seemingly abandoned that title by sullying her relationships with fellow crime writers and alienating herself from the Detection Club.

She was one of the Big Three female crime writers in the 1920s alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers before Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh came around.

Answer: Stand-up surfing

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) -- While on a world tour in 1922, Christie and her first husband Archie learned to surf in South Africa. In Hawaii, they learned how to surf standing up, the way traditional Hawaiians do it. At the time, surfing was not a widely popular sport outside of island and beach locales. Christie is considered to be one of the pioneers of surfing in Britain and the British Museum of Surfing has a display dedicated to her.

Answer: Guinness is good for you

While working at S.H. Bendon's, a well-known ad agency, Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) wrote slogans. Her most well-known creation is a verse for Guinness beer that included the famous line "Guinness is good for you". She also created the Guinness toucan that was Guinness's mascot for decades. Sayers' ad writing career overlapped, for a brief period, with her writing career.

She used her experience in the ad agency in her novel "Murder Must Advertise" where Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover in an advertising bureau.

Answer: Freeman Wills Crofts

Freeman Wills Croft (1879-1957) served as a railway engineer under his uncle before becoming one himself. He continued to work on railways until his writing career took off in 1919. His detective, Inspector French, is often known to break alibis by using and studying railway time tables and many of his mysteries involve trains in some way.

Answer: Peter Ustinov

Patricia Moyes (1923-2000) served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in 1939 and was hired as a technical assistant for the film "School for Secrets" which focused on the Royal Air Force and which Peter Ustinov directed. Ustinov then hired Patricia Moyes to be his personal assistance and she held that job for nearly a decade until she became an editor for "Vogue" before becoming a mystery writer.

She also co-wrote the screenplay to "School for Scoundrels" (1960) with Ustinov which starred Ian Carmichael. Ustinov would later play Hercule Poirot in six films.

Answer: Jockey

Dick Francis (1920-2011) was a notable champion jockey for many years. He did not become a crime writer until after he retired from the sport in 1956. He won championship horse races and even was the jockey to Elizabeth the Queen Mother for four years. Very notably, he was riding the Queen Mother's horse Devon Loch when the horse fell near the end of the course at the Grand National in 1956.

In 1983, he rallied to save Aintree Racecourse when the course was threatened with closure. Many of Francis's crime novels are set in the sport of horseracing or involve horses in some way.