Born in my hometown of Pittsburgh in 1876, she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and identified there as: “America’s first woman war correspondent during World War I for the Saturday Evening Post; wrote mystery novels, including The Circular Staircase and The Bat; in 1921 was referred to as ‘America’s Mistress of Mystery.” A fearless woman, also called “America’s Agatha Christie,” she’s credited as the inventor of the “Had-I-But-Known” mystery novel and for the phrase “the butler did it.” Her best-selling books and plays were often adapted for film, and one novel was among the earliest “talking book” recordings.
In much of Rinehart’s work, the challenge is discovering what’s hidden from view because the “hidden situation” looms more important than whodunit. An accomplished mystery writer trained in nursing, Rinehart combined those talents in her series featuring nurse Hilda Adams, a.k.a Miss Pinkerton, who at times works undercover for the police. In “Locked Doors,” she’s recruited to replace a badly shaken nurse who came to the police after four days of living in a large eerie house, working for a peculiar family with no servants, no working telephone, two young children confined to their room, and doors barred shut at night. Its spine-chilling, not-your-normal-mystery sort of “Gothic thrills” plotting might just keep you from guessing the “perfectly macabre solution to this mystery.”
Born in my hometown of Pittsburgh in 1876, she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and identified there as: “America’s first woman war correspondent during World War I for the Saturday Evening Post; wrote mystery novels, including The Circular Staircase and The Bat; in 1921 was referred to as ‘America’s Mistress of Mystery.” A fearless woman, also called “America’s Agatha Christie,” she’s credited as the inventor of the “Had-I-But-Known” mystery novel and for the phrase “the butler did it.” Her best-selling books and plays were often adapted for film, and one novel was among the earliest “talking book” recordings.
In much of Rinehart’s work, the challenge is discovering what’s hidden from view because the “hidden situation” looms more important than whodunit. An accomplished mystery writer trained in nursing, Rinehart combined those talents in her series featuring nurse Hilda Adams, a.k.a Miss Pinkerton, who at times works undercover for the police. In “Locked Doors,” she’s recruited to replace a badly shaken nurse who came to the police after four days of living in a large eerie house, working for a peculiar family with no servants, no working telephone, two young children confined to their room, and doors barred shut at night. Its spine-chilling, not-your-normal-mystery sort of “Gothic thrills” plotting might just keep you from guessing the “perfectly macabre solution to this mystery.”