Aaron Marc Stein (November 15 1906 – August 29, 1985), who used the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

George Bagby, was an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

who specialized in

mystery fiction Mystery is a genre fiction, fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains wiktionary:mysterious, mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually prov ...

. Bagby's focus was on police investigators, especially the fictional Inspector Schmidt, Chief of Homicide for the

New York Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

. In the Schmidt novels, mystery-writer Bagby himself appears as "the

Watson Watson may refer to: Companies * Actavis, a pharmaceutical company formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals * A.S. Watson Group, retail division of Hutchison Whampoa * Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM research center * Watson Systems, make ...

to Schmidt's

Holmes Holmes may refer to: Name * Holmes (surname) * Holmes (given name) * Baron Holmes, noble title created twice in the Peerage of Ireland * Chris Holmes, Baron Holmes of Richmond (born 1971), British former swimmer and life peer Places In the ...

, following him on cases, and acting as biographer." A number of his novels have been translated into other languages, including German, French, and Spanish.

Biography

Stein was born on November 15, 1906 in New York City. He attended Princeton University, graduating with a degree in archaeology and also summa cum laude. His early avant-garde novels came to the attention of Theodore Dreiser and were published, but he did not gain much fame till he moved into writing mysteries. In addition to Bagby, he also published mystery novels under his own name, and under the pseudonym Hampton Stone. He held a position as a radio critic for a New York newspaper in the 1930s, and then went to work for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine. During World War II he worked with the US Army. Over 100 novels by Stein eventually saw publication, and for his lifetime achievements the

Mystery Writers of America Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is an organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City. The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday. It presents the Edgar Award ...

named him a Grand Master at the 1979

Edgar Award The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the bes ...

s. His final book, ''The Garbage Collector'', was published in 1984. Stein died of cancer in 1985, at the age of 79, in

Lenox Hill Hospital Lenox Hill Hospital (LHH) is a nationally ranked 450-bed non-profit, tertiary, research and academic medical center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, servicing the tri-state area. LHH is one of the region's many unive ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Primary works

In addition to the hero of most of the Bagby novels, Inspector Schmidt, Stein also created a New York City Assistant District Attorney named Jeremiah Gibson for the books published under the Stone pseudonym, and archaeologist detectives Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, as well as engineer Matt Herridge, for the mysteries published under his own name. Stein's first novel was published in 1930. His first mystery, ''Murder at the Piano'', was published in 1935. The first novel written as Stone was titled ''The Corpse in the Corner Saloon''. It was reviewed in the New York Times in 1948.

Selected list of novels

*''The Most Wanted'' (1983) *''My Dead Body'' (1976) *''Two in the Bush'' (1976) *''Killer Boy Was Here'' *''Cop Killer'' *''Dead Storage'' *''A Dirty Way to Die'' *''Dead Drunk'' *''Scared to Death'' (1952) *''Drop Dead'' *''In Cold Blood'' *''Red Is for Killing'' *''Murder on the Nose'' *''Murder at the Piano'' *''Bachelors' Wife'' *''Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand'' *''Bird Walking Weather'' (published in French under the title ''Purée de Pois'', Paris, Librairie des Champs-Élysées, Le Masque , 1952)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bagby, George 1906 births 1985 deaths American mystery writers 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Princeton University alumni Writers from New York City Time (magazine) people Edgar Award winners Radio critics American male novelists Novelists from New York (state)