Frances Crane
Encyclopedia
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, who introduced private investigator Pat Abbott and his future wife Jean in her first novel, The Turquoise Shop
The Turquoise Shop
The Turquoise Shop is a mystery novel by the American writer Frances Crane.-Synopsis:Several months ago, Mona Brandon's artist husband disappeared, and his body has now surfaced deep in the heart of the nearby desert, pecked beyond recognition by a horde of odious turkey vultures...
(1941). The Abbotts investigated crimes in a total of 26 volumes, each with a color in the title.
Life and career
Crane (neeMarried and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Kirkwood) hailed from a wealthy, well-educated family; most of her male relatives were doctors, and her aunt Nancy may have earned a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
, highly unusual for a woman of that time. Some biographies mistakenly list her birth year as 1896.
Her husband was the wealthy advertising executive Ned Crane, and throughout their marriage Frances regularly published articles in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, where she became known for her dry, sophisticated sense of humour. She had an extended stay in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
towards the end of the thirties, but her liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
opinions and outspokenness soon put her at odds with the rising tide of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
; she was once reprimanded after thumbing her nose at a speech by Hitler being broadcast over loudspeakers, and on another occasion tried convincing the staff at an anti-Semitic restaurant that she was Jewish (her family were in fact descended from Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
Presbyterians
Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...
). She was expelled from Germany following the arrest of her Jewish housekeeper and the woman's son, supposedly for 'crimes against the state', and Frances's subsequent furious articles decrying the Nazi regime.
After leaving behind Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, having been recently divorced and faced with mounting college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
bills from her only daughter, Nancy, Frances began formulating detective stories, upon realising that her old fiction - gentle satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
s of English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
culture - were going out of fashion among modern American readers, who were now supporting the British in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Nancy herself was a sculptor and also wrote articles of her own in the late 1940's; she was married to the pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
writer Norbert Davis until his suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, possibly as a result of his cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
diagnosis, and had one daughter by him, Diana Farris. Frances published no novels in 1949 because of Nancy's near fatal car accident; she crashed the same vehicle her husband gassed himself in, and was left facially mutilated for several months afterwards. Amazingly she had another child, Cynthia, soon after the incident.
The Turquoise Shop
The Turquoise Shop is a mystery novel by the American writer Frances Crane.-Synopsis:Several months ago, Mona Brandon's artist husband disappeared, and his body has now surfaced deep in the heart of the nearby desert, pecked beyond recognition by a horde of odious turkey vultures...
, in 1941, after hearing about a real-life incident in a jeweller's shop, and subsequently produced 25 more mystery novels, taking early retirement by 1968. She died in an Albuquerque nursing home, where she had spent the previous few months because of ill-health. Her ashes were scattered across her home town of Lawrenceville.
Radio
From 1945 to 1947, the radio series, Abbott MysteriesAbbott Mysteries
Abbott Mysteries was a comedy-mystery radio program adapted from the novels of Frances Crane . Initially a summer replacement for Quick As a Flash, the series was heard on Mutual and NBC between the years 1945 and 1955....
, was based on Crane's characters. Between 1954 and 1955, the radio program Adventures of the Abbotts starred Claudia Morgan
Claudia Morgan
Claudia Morgan was an American film, television and radio actress. She was best known for playing the role of Vera Claythorne in the first Broadway production of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and for her portrayal of Nora Charles on the 1940s radio series, The Adventures of the Thin...
and Don Briggs (followed by Les Damon and Mandel Kramer) as the husband-and-wife crimefighters.
Pat and Jean Abbott novels
- The Turquoise ShopThe Turquoise ShopThe Turquoise Shop is a mystery novel by the American writer Frances Crane.-Synopsis:Several months ago, Mona Brandon's artist husband disappeared, and his body has now surfaced deep in the heart of the nearby desert, pecked beyond recognition by a horde of odious turkey vultures...
- 1941 - The Golden Box - 1942
- The Yellow Violet - 1942
- The Applegreen Cat - 1943
- The Pink Umbrella - 1943 (aka The Pink Umbrella Murder)
- The Amethyst Spectacles - 1944
- The Indigo NecklaceThe Indigo NecklaceThe Indigo Necklace , initially published as The Indigo Necklace Murders, is a mystery novel by Frances Crane.-Synopsis:While staying in an old New Orleans mansion, Pat Abbott overhears the disquieting sound of opening doors and stolen footsteps across the balcony outside his room, before...
- 1945 (aka The Indigo Necklace Murders) - The Cinnamon Murder - 1946
- The Shocking Pink Hat - 1946
- Murder on the Purple Water - 1947
- Black Cypress - 1948
- The Flying Red Horse - 1949
- The Daffodil Blonde - 1950
- Murder in Blue Street - 1951 (aka Death in the Blue Hour)
- The Polkadot Murder - 1951
- 13 White Tulips - 1953
- Murder in Bright Red - 1953
- The Coral Princess Murders - 1954
- Death in Lilac Time - 1955
- Horror on the Ruby X - 1956
- The Ultraviolet Widow - 1956
- The Man in GrayThe Man in GrayThe Man in Gray is a 1961 Italian short documentary film produced by Benedetto Benedetti. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short....
- 1958 (aka The Gray Stranger) - The Buttercup Case - 1958
- Death-Wish Green - 1960
- The Amber Eyes - 1962
- Body Beneath A Mandarin Tree - 1965
Non-Abbott novels
- The Reluctant Sleuth - 1961
- Three Days in Hong Kong - 1965
- A Very Quiet Murder - 1966
- Worse Than a Crime - 1968