John Dickson Carr (1906 - 1977) was born in Uniontown, Pa. as the son of Julia and Wooda Nicholas Carr, a Pennsylvania lawyer who served a term in Congress. Carr told a story of himself as a child being introduced to President Woodrow Wilson and asking him what he did for a living.  
Settling in England, Carr attained a pace of four novels a year, plus radio and short story work. It was more than one publisher could handle, so Carr started with another publisher, choosing the pseudonym Nicholas Wood in honor of his father. When The Bowstring Murders (1933) appeared, it bore, to his shock, the byline "Carr Dickson." Both Carr and the original publisher were understandably miffed, but a slight change to "Carter Dickson" mollified them. The

dual identity was one of the worst-kept secrets in the history of the genre, with stories appearing under either name in various collections. Carr was elected to the Detection Club, the first American to be so honored. Carr is best known for his intricate puzzle novels with strong Gothic and supernatural overtones. The man is known as "the master of the locked room." He was that. No one in the history of the genre could match him for sheer sustained ingenuity when it came to devising reader-bamboozling locked rooms and other impossible crimes. Of these, The Three Coffins (1935), contains not only a mystery, but a lecture by Dr. Fell which defines the genre. He was also author of the first standard biography of Sir Arthur Canon Doyle (1949), and collaborated with Doyle's son Adrian in The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

(1954). Incidentally, he showed himself also to be a master at putting one over on the publisher. In 1964, ill and behind schedule, yet still required to submit a book, he dusted off the thirty-year-old Devil Kinsmere, revised it, retitled it Most Secret, and had it accepted again by the publishing company that issued it unsuccessfully thirty years before.  From 1969 until his death, he wrote "The Jury Box," a mystery review column in EQMM. Carr created four distinct, and distinctly likable detectives: Henri Bencolin and Dr. Gideon Fell under his own name, and Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonel March as Dickson. What is even more remarkable is that they remain distinguishable even though they all meet the same type of cases (impossible crimes) and tend to serve the same function in the structure of the story.
Carr did not attempt to write stories of genteel murders solved by detached intellectuals. Carr, who frequently used the phrase "improving one's mind with the study of sensational fiction," would wade hip-deep in atmosphere. Ruined castles, rats, rooms that seem to kill, and lurid tales from the plague era all figure in his novels. There are often pools of blood. On top of this, Carr could write scenes of rollicking slapstick and frequently threw them in the same books with the brooding horrors, thereby somehow increasing the impact of both. To quote a contemporary assessment from Dorothy L. Sayers, "In short, he can write."

Francis M(ichael), Jr. Nevins (born Bayonne, New Jersey, January 6, 1943 -    ) U.S. lawyer, law professor, editor, anthologist, and scholar and writer of mystery stories. He teaches Estates, Copyright, Law and Electronic Media, and seminars in related areas at the St. Louis University Law School in Missouri. An scholar of the genre who constantly unearths great old stories and reintroduces forgotten writers to modern scrutiny. Prof. Nevins is an accomplished mystery writer, having published numerous short stories and five full-length mystery novels.   Some book-length critical works by Nevins, both of which have won Edgar Awards are Royal Bloodline: Ellery Queen, Author and Detective won for 1974, and the study Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die was the best critical/biographical work of 1988.
In 2002 (together with Martin Grams, Jr) he wrote The Sound of Detection: Ellery Queen’s Adventures in Radio which updated the information from an earlier 1973 edition (with Ray Stanich).  Read More Here...

Anthony Boucher (b.August 21, 1911 - d. April 1968) William Anthony Parker White, to give him his full name, was well-known in both SF and detection circles. He was born in Oakland, California and until his death in 1968 spent most of his working days as an author, editor and critic of these two genres plus -- another major interest -- opera and music. Thus he regularly reviewed detective stories for EQMM. Anthony Boucher also edited True Crime Detective magazine (1952-53), half a dozen detection anthologies and, in succession, three major American lines of crime fiction: the Mercury Mysteries (1952-55), the Dell Great Mystery Library (1957-60) and the Collier Mystery Classics (1962-68). Between 1945 and 1948 he wrote radio plays for the Sherlock Holmes and Case Book of Gregory Hood (with Denis Green) series in the USA. He even stepped as replacement for Frederic Dannay to continue the Ellery Queen radio drama together with Manfred B.Lee. The Mystery Writers of America elected him their President for 1951, and three times voted him the Edgar Allan Poe award for excellence in criticism (1946, 1950, 1953). In 1970, after his death, American detective fans began annual conventions in his memory -- "Bouchercons". Another nonfiction book, published during his lifetime, was Ellery Queen: A Double Profile (1951); this of course dealt with the two authors who between them were the late Ellery Queen. His fictional output wasn't huge. Apart from the multiple collaboration The Marble Forest (1951, as by "Theo Durrant", also known as The Big Fear), it consists of seven detective novels and barely fifty short stories, some mysteries, some SF/fantasy and some an enjoyable mixture of both. He died of lung cancer.

G.K. Chesterton (b. May 29, 1874, d. June 14, 1936), Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a versatile and iconoclastic English author equally at home in many genres. He wrote novels, 1904), criticism (works on Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and George Bernard Shaw), poetry, biography (St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas), and innumerable essays. He was also a talented artist, as seen in his boisterous illustrations of his own works. Among his admirable short stories, the best known are those about the priest-detective Father Brown, who first appeared in The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and continued through five collections. Father Brown's methods were based less on material clues than on his intuitive knowledge of human motivation. The plots are unlikely but the puzzles ingenious, and the superbly written stories abound in the illuminating paradoxes of which Chesterton was a master and in breathtaking analyses of moral truth. A doctrinal and social conservative, Chesterton was received into the Roman Catholic church in 1922 by his friend Father John O'Connor (the model for Father Brown), and exercised a considerable influence on later English Catholic writers, notably Evelyn Waugh. Ever the individualist, he was known for his ebullient humor and huge girth. In 1936 he published his autobiography.

Dame Agatha Christie (b. Sept. 15, 1890,
d. Jan. 12, 1976), was for more than half a century the foremost British writer of mystery novels. Her books have been translated into every major language, and her two most famous creations, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the village-wise Miss Jane Marple, solved dozens of murders after the appearance of her first Poirot book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920.
Educated at home, she married Archibald Christie in 1914, retaining his surname for professional reasons after their 1928 divorce. She married archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930.
Christie's first real success after the Styles book was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which created controversy among mystery fans because of its unorthodox denouement. From then until her death, she produced nearly 100 novels, notably Murder at the Vicarage (1930), which introduced Miss Marple in a starring role; Murder on the Orient Express (1934; film, 1974); Ten Little Indians (1939; films, 1945, 1965, and 1975); and Curtain (1975).
Christie also enjoyed success as a playwright. Her Witness for the Prosecution (1954) was made into a popular film in 1958, and The Mousetrap (1952) has run almost continuously in London for more than 30 years. Christie's autobiography was published posthumously in 1977.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied to be a doctor at the University of Edinburgh and set up a small practice at South sea in Hampshire during his 20s. While the practice proved largely unsuccessful, the lack of patients provided him with the opportunity to create possibly the most popular character ever introduced in the history of fiction, Sherlock Holmes. While at University, Conan Doyle had been greatly influenced by John Bell, one of his professors. Bell was an expert in the use of deductive reasoning to diagnose disease. Conan Doyle was so impressed that he used these same principles when creating his famous detective.
Holmes was introduced in A Study in Scarlet (1887), followed by A Sign of Four in 1890, but didn't really take hold of the public's imagination until Strand magazine, newly founded in 1890, published a series of short stories called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. From that point on the public couldn't get enough of Holmes and his always reliable confidant, John H. Watson, a retired military doctor.
Residing in London at 221B Baker Street, Holmes's character and personality set him apart from all others. "Holmes, with his keen sense of observation, his lean face and hooked nose, his long legs, his deerstalker hat, his magnifying glass, and his ever-present pipe. When in The Final Problem (1893), Holmes and his longtime nemesis, Professor Moriarty, are killed off, the public outcry was so great, Conan Doyle was forced to bring him back to life. He continued the exploits of Holmes and Watson nine years later in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). More novels and short stories appeared to the delight of Conan Doyle's fans until The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927), the last to feature the brilliant sleuth. Sherlock Holmes is without doubt one of the most beloved figures in the history of mystery fiction. Conan Doyle's works were made into several stage plays and feature films. In all, Holmes and Watson were featured in four novels and 56 short stories. Despite the success of his most famous character, throughout his adult life Conan Doyle sought to escape the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon and concentrate on writing about his other interests. Although he was never completely successful due to the intense popularity of Holmes, he was knighted for his nonfiction work on the Boer War and also wrote other historical works such as The White Company (1890).

S.S.Van Dine (b. Charlottesville, Va., 1888?, d. Apr. 11, 1939), was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright an American scholar, editor, and art critic who turned to the writing of fiction after his health declined. He wrote a series of detective novels with an amateur sleuth as protagonist: Philo Vance, a languid purveyor of esoteric knowledge and icy logic, was a huge success. Between 1926 and 1938, 12 novels appeared, 11 of which were turned into movies, and, in the 1940s, Vance was also featured in a radio series. Among the best of the Van Dine novels are The Greene Murder Case (1928), The Bishop Murder Case (1929), and The Scarab Murder Case (1930).

Edgar Allan Poe (b. Boston, Jan. 19, 1809, d. Oct. 7, 1849), is best known for his poems and short fiction,  deserves more credit than any other writer for the transformation of the short story from anecdote to art. He virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller. He also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his time--important theoretical statements on poetry and the short story--and has had a worldwide influence on literature.