Monday, November 19, 2012

Yorke Passes Away

Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade brings us the sad news today that English crime novelist Margaret Yorke has died. According to another report, in Mystery Fanfare, she passed away on Saturday at age 88.

Yorke (whose real name was Margaret Beda Nicholson) was born on January 30, 1924, in Compton, Surrey, but spent her growing-up years in Dublin, Ireland. She finally moved back to England in 1937. Twenty years later, she saw her first novel published, Summer Flight. She went on to produce more than 40 other novels, five of which starred her Oxford Don sleuth, Dr. Patrick Grant. All of the Grant tales--including the first, 1970’s Dead in the Morning--were reissued in paperback by House of Stratus earlier this year.

Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) had Yorke as its chairman in 1979 and 1980, and she won not only Sweden’s Martin Beck Award in 1982 but also the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1999.

I don’t yet see any official obituaries of Yorke, or any mention of her cause of death. But I shall update this item as more news comes in.

READ MORE:Margaret Yorke, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’).

1 comment:

The Passing Tramp said...

That's shame. Back in the 1970s, Yorke was a much mentioned figure in the development of the English psychological crime novel, often mentioned with James and Rendell.