John Stephen Strange was the pen name of Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett, who wrote 22 mystery novels for the Crime Club published from 1928 to 1976.

Mrs. Tillett began her mystery writing career in 1928 when her first novel, The Man Who Killed Fortescue was published for the newly formed Crime Club.  She maintained the secret of her true identity through the 48 years she published under the name John Stephen Strange, finally retiring from writing with the publication of her last novel, The House on 9th Street in 1976. Dorothy died in Connecticut in 1983.

We proudly present these reprinted editions for our fellow Classic Mystery enthusiasts:

Newest Release
1931

A brand new, annotated edition of the 1931 classic!

In November 1930, the Yorke College football team is on the 10-yard line, with three minutes to go in the most crucial game of the season, when their coach slumps suddenly to the ground, a bullet through his heart.
Even though fifty thousand spectators are witnesses to the murder, not one, including Detective Van Dusen Ormsberry, sees the shooter. Ormsberry must discover the murderer before the media pressures law enforcement to arrest an innocent man, but as Ormsberry and his friend, Bill Adams, pursue their investigations, what had seemed a simple case of homicide becomes a complex circle of mystery that threatens to engulf the little college town in terrible tragedy.

Original Publication
1930

In 1922, on his private island off the coast of Florida, on a calm, lovely evening, Senator Stephen Huntington walked out on the terrace for an after-dinner cigar—and was never seen again. Local superstition has it that he was devoured by the strangler fig, a tropical vine that spreads itself onto other plants and kills again and again, slaying relentlessly and without compunction anything that stands in the path of its growth. Seven years later, Bolivar Brown accepts an invitation to vacation on the island with Huntington’s family and some of the Senator’s former friends. When a hurricane batters the island, clean-up crews soon find the dead strangler fig vine wrapped around a body dressed in the Senator’s clothes. That evening another victim is strangled. Bolivar Brown is compelled to discover the truth buried beneath the passions and ambitions of the Senator's former friends before another falls victim to the strangler fig.

Original Publication
1929

After leaving his sister's opulent Garden Party in 1927 Greenwich, Connecticut a naval inventor is shot dead while driving his Packard down a country lane beside the estate. Bill Adams, teen sleuth, begins the investigation, calling his friend, Detective Van Dusen Ormsberry home from his vacation in France to prevent an unjust conviction. Ormsberry must wade through the accused's past political scandal; the torrid love triangle of the accused, the stage actress and the victim; and the post-World War One International espionage ring he discovers to find the actual murderer. 

We are thrilled to be able to present this new addition in 2014, 85 years after its first publication!