Clyde B. Clason’s career as a mystery writer took up only five of his 84 years, but in the short span between 1936 and 1941 he produced ten long and very complicated detective novels, all published by the prestigious Doubleday, Doran Crime Club, featuring the elderly historian Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough.

Born in Denver in 1903, Clason spent many years in Chicago, the setting for several of his novels, including The Man from Tibet, before moving to York, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1987. During his early years in Chicago Clason worked as an advertising copywriter and a trade magazine editor, producing books on architecture, period furniture and one book on writing, How To Write Stories that Sell. For some reason, Clason stopped selling mysteries on the eve of World War II, although he published several other books, including Ark of Venus (1955), a science fiction novel, and I am Lucifer (1960), the confessions of the devil as told to Clason. He also produced several nonfiction works dealing with astronomy as well as The Delights of the Slide Rule (1964), his last published book-length work.