Clayton Rawson
Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a minor character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."
Life and career
Rawson was born in Elyria, Ohio, the son of Clarence D. and Clara Rawson. He became a magician when he was 8 years old. He married Catherine Stone in 1929, the same year he graduated from Ohio State University, and they had four children. He moved to Chicago and worked there as an illustrator.His first novel, Death from a Top Hat, appeared in 1938.
He was one of the four founding members of the Mystery Writers of America, which presents the annual Edgar Awards in various categories of mystery writing. All of his novels were written before the founding of this group, but in 1949 and 1967 Rawson received Special Edgar Awards for his various contributions to mystery writing and the MWA, including the founding of the organization's first newsletter, "The Third Degree". Rawson is also credited with writing the organization's first slogan: "Crime Does Not Pay—Enough".
Rawson was widely admired by his mystery-writing colleagues, and John Dickson Carr, master of "impossible crime" stories, dedicated the 1965 novel "The House at Satan's Elbow" to him. Rawson was managing editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine between 1963 and his death in the United Hospital, Port Chester, N.Y., in 1971.
Rawson's burial was apparently in New York. Sometime between 2006 and 2011, his name was inscribed on his parents' double gravestone at a cemetery in Elyria, Lorain County, Ohio, noting the family connection and honoring a hometown boy who achieved fame. However, he is not buried there. The date of his death in this added inscription is incorrectly listed as 1970.
Works on the screen
At least two movies were made based on the Merlini books. One of them, Miracles for Sale, was based on Death from a Top Hat but had no character named Merlini. Instead, Robert Young played the character as "The Great Morgan". The movie The Man Who Wouldn't Die, starring Lloyd Nolan, was based on No Coffin for the Corpse, but the Merlini character was replaced by Michael Shayne, a popular fictional private eye at the time, created by the writer Brett Halliday.A 30-minute pilot for a television series was created in 1951, but no further episodes were made. The Transparent Man, written by Rawson, starred Jerome Thor as The Great Merlini — who in this incarnation was a stage magician — with Barbara Cook as his assistant Julie, and featuring E. G. Marshall as a criminal.
As Clayton Rawson
Mystery novels
Death from a Top Hat The Footprints on the Ceiling The Headless LadyShort story collections
The Great Merlini- * The Clue of the Tattooed Man
- * The Clue of the Broken Legs
- * The Clue of the Missing Motive
- * From Another World
- * Off the Face of the Earth
- * Merlini and the Lie Detector
- * Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds
- * Merlini and the Sound Effects Murder
- * Nothing Is Impossible
- * Miracles - All in the Day's Work
- * Merlini and the Photographic Clue
- * ''The World's Smallest Locked Room''
Other books
Scarne on Dice- ''Al Baker's Pet Secrets''
Short stories
The Clue of the Tattooed Man. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1946. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1947. Collected in The Great MerliniThe Clue of the Broken Legs. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January 1947. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, April 1947. Collected in The Great MerliniThe Clue of the Missing Motive. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, February 1947. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1947. Collected in The Great MerliniThe Case of the Stuttering Sextant. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1947. From Another World. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, June 1948. Collected in The Great MerliniPictures Don't Lie. Leaflet published with a jigsaw puzzle. Reprinted as Merlini and the Photographic Clue. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 1969. Collected in The Great MerliniOff the Face of the Earth. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1949. Collected in The Great MerliniMerlini and the Lie Detector. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1955. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1955. Collected in The Great MerliniMerlini and the Vanished Diamonds. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1955. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1955. Collected in The Great MerliniMerlini and the Sound Effects Murder. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1955. Story published without a solution as a competition for readers; solution published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1956. Collected in The Great MerliniNothing Is Impossible. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1958. Collected in The Great Merlini. Reprinted in The Locked Room Reader: Stories of Impossible Crimes and Escapes, edited by Hans S SantessonMiracles - All in the Day's Work. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1958. Collected in The Great MerliniThe World's Smallest Locked Room. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 1971. Collected in The Great MerliniUncollected short stories
Dotty Joins a Lodge. College Life, April 1931Dotty Has Heart Trouble. College Life, May 1931Dotty Gets Her Man. College Life, Summer 1931Dotty Hunts Pirate Gold. College Life, September 1931Dotty Back to Bloop!. College Life, October 1931Dotty’s Diary. College Life, October 1932Dotty at a Night Club. College Life, December 1932The Deadly Clown. Detective Fiction Weekly 14 September, 21 September, 28 September, 5 October, 12 October and 19 October 1940As The Great Merlini
Non-fiction
How to Entertain Children with Magic You Can Do- ''The Golden Book of Magic: Amazing Tricks for Young Magicians''
As Stuart Towne
Short story collections
Death out of Thin Air- * Death from the Past: Ghost of the Undead
- * Death from the Unseen: Death Out of Thin AirDeath from Nowhere
- * Act I: The Claws of Satan
- * Act II: The Enchanted DaggerThe Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo
- * Ghost of the Undead
- * Death from Thin Air
- * The Claws of Satan
- * The Enchanted Dagger
- * Stand-In for a Kill
- * Mr. Mystery
- * The Man with the Radio Mind
- * Ace of Death
- * ''The Man with X-Ray Eyes''