Mystery Monday: Ruth Sawtell Wallis Anthropologist and Novelist

Mystery Monday: Ruth Sawtell Wallis 

Anthropologist and Novelist

Better known in the academic world of anthropology for her research and discoveries, Ruth Sawtell Wallis wrote mystery novels. Her first, Too May Bones, was published in 1943. She received an undergraduate degree in English from Radcliffe College, after which she traveled to Europe as part of her graduate program in anthropology at Columbia University. A brilliant scientist, Ruth went on to receive her doctorate and began to teach at the University of Iowa. A year later, she married Professor Wilson Dallam Wallis, and as was typical of the era, lost her job as a result. Over the years she was able to work in her field intermittently, and she also collaborated on books with her husband.

According to her obituary written by a colleague, Ruth began to write mysteries in 1940 while recovering from a serious illness. Her books involve academic settings, and anthropology plays an integral part in the solution to the crimes. Set in a museum, Too Many Bones won the Red Badge Prize for best mystery of the year. When her novels were written, there were no “sub-genres” in the mystery book industry, however, hers may very well be the first in that now popular sub-genre.

Check out the map from the back of the dust jacket! Perhaps another first in the mystery genre.

Ruth conveys her feelings about women’s treatment in academia, especially wage differences, through her main character, Kay Ellis. Unusual for the time, Ruth also includes two African-American characters who have their own subplot. Unfortunately for readers, she only published five novels during a ten year period. The good news is they can be found for reasonable prices at any number of online sites.

Mystery Monday: The Award Winning Author - Helen Eustis

Mystery Monday: Author Helen Eustis

Like an industry, the publishing industry has ebbed and flowed with its own set of "rules and regulations." Recently, there seems to be a trend for authors to write under a pseudonym if they change genres or series (e.g. Nora Roberts, Roberta Isleib, J.K. Rowling). I wonder what publishers would have thought about Helen Eustis who worked as a copywriter and wrote two mysteries, children's books, and short stories. She also translated numerous books from French into English.

She only published one mystery, The Horizontal Man, that won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1947. Based loosely on her experiences at Smith College, about which the author said in an interview, there were plenty of people at college she wanted to murder. Her undergraduate degree was in art, and she attended Columbia University for a time to study literature, but did not finish, instead pursuing a writing career.

The Horizontal Man includes psychologically unstable students and professors, and her 1954 release  about a boy's adventure traveling the Midwest with an amnesiac Civil War veteran, also included psychological drama. In 1965, the book was made into a movie starring Anthony Perkins and Edward Albert. Perkins's role is said to have been quite like his Psycho character Norman Bates.
The Fool Killer

Eustis won the O. Henry prize for her short story, An American Home, and her other stories appeared in Harper's Monthly, The Saturday Evening Post, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and other notable publications.

Unfortunately, her personal life was not as successful as her writing live. She married twice. Her first marriage to her professor, Alfred Young Fisher, with whom she had a son, and her second marriage to press photographer Martin Harris, both ended in divorce. Her mother died when she was a young child, and father committed suicide shortly before her first book came out.

Check your local library for her classic stories.