The Mathematics of Guilt

298 pp. Brown boards with red text on spine and front board. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "Isabel Egenton Ostrander (1883–1924) was a mystery writer of the early twentieth century who used her own name and the pseudonyms Robert Orr Chipperfield, David Fox, and Douglas Grant. Christopher B. Booth is sometimes (falsely) credited as a pseudonym of hers. She was born in New York City to Thomas E Ostrander and Harriet Elizabeth Bradbrook. Her Ostrander pedigree goes back to seventeenth century Kingston, New York. In the discussions of which writer invented the blind detective, Ostrander is one of the candidates. The first book publication of her Damon Gaunt is a 1915 novel At One-Thirty, but there might be a misplaced earlier short story: periodical publication of many mystery short story writers is often lost or partial. For example, blind detective Thornley Colton appeared in some short stories in People's Ideal Fiction Magazine in early 1913 that weren't collected in book form until 1915, while Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah reached the periodicals in 1913, but anthologization in 1914. In no case is bibliography complete for periodicals, and either might be the first, though Max Carrados was the first in book publication. In the 1920s, Ostrander was notable enough that Agatha Christie parodied her in her Tommy and Tuppence anthology, Partners in Crime. We find Tommy and Tuppence modeling their detective skills after Ostrander's characters, McCarty and Riordan."