Mystery Monday: Who was Peter Drax?
There were
many famous people who lost their lives during WWII: Carole Lombard, Glenn
Miller, Leslie Howard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Someone perhaps less well-known
who was killed in action was author Eric Elrington Addis. Writing under the
pseudonym Peter Drax, Addis published six crime novels during the Golden Age of
detective fiction.

Despite
his short career as a novelist, Eric is considered an important author during
the Golden Age. As one reviewer put it, “Rather than the artificial and outsize
master sleuths and super crooks found in so many classic mysteries from the
Gold Age, Drax’s novels concern police who are not endowed with supernatural powers
and crooks who are also human.” Two of his books, Death by Two Hands and Tune
to a Corpse were published in the United States, and received excellent
reviews. When he died he left an unfinished manuscript Sing a Song of Murder, and his wife, author Hazel Iris Wilson
completed the book, it was published in 1944.

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