Lionel Black
Lionel Black was the pen name of Dudley Raymond Barker, a British journalist and author born on March 25, 1910, in London. He was educated at Bournemouth School and Oriel College, Oxford, before embarking on a journalistic career that began in 1933 with the London Evening Standard. Throughout his life, Barker worked for various publications, including the London Daily Herald and John Bull, and also served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Under the pseudonym Lionel Black, he authored a series of crime novels, primarily known for featuring British espionage agent Emma Greaves and journalist Kate Theobald.
Black's works often include intricate plots and a mix of traditional mystery elements, set against diverse backgrounds such as seaside towns and rare coin collecting. His writing reflects a keen interest in character dynamics, often depicting strong female protagonists facing various challenges. Key recurring characters include Detective Chief Inspector Aloysius "Bill" Comfort and the investigative pair of Kate and Henry Theobald. Lionel Black passed away in 1980, leaving behind a notable legacy in the genre of crime fiction.
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Lionel Black
Fiction Writer
- Born: March 25, 1910
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: 1980
Biography
Lionel Black was the pseudonym of journalist Dudley Raymond Barker, a novelist and writer of nonfiction books. Barker was born March 25, 1910, in London, the son of Theodore Edwin and Katie Bradgate Barker. He was educated at Bournemouth School and Oriel College, Oxford, before beginning work in 1933 for the London Evening Standard. In 1935, he married Muriel Irene Griffiths, with whom he had two children. He joined the London Daily Herald in 1940, and served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1945, returning to the Daily Herald after the end of World War II. In 1954, he became an associate editor for John Bull. He joined the Curtis Brown literary agency in 1960, and five years later he became a full-time writer.
Barker‘s earliest crime novels written under the pseudonym Lionel Black were spy stories involving Emma Greaves, a British espionage agent. Greaves is the well-educated daughter of a wealthy South African family. In The Bait (1966), she is used to attract the killer of another woman agent. In Two Ladies in Verona (1967; published in the United States as The Lady is a Spy, 1968), she is involved in espionage while on vacation. Black’s best-known crime series features journalist Kate Theobald and her attorney husband Henry Theobald. Kate is a rash, dedicated writer who begins as a cooking columnist but later becomes an investigative reporter. Impervious to threats or warnings of danger from her husband and police, she frequently finds herself in trouble from which she must be rescued by her husband.
While Black sometimes makes use of the traditional locked room puzzle in the Theobald novels, he offers a variety of backgrounds. Death by Hoax (1974) takes place in a seaside town plagued by a potentially dangerous practical joker who may be responsible for a fatal bomb attack on a local industrialist. Rare coin collecting provides the context for The Penny Murders (1979), as various collectors pursue a rare Edward VIII threepenny piece and 1933 and 1954 pennies that may have been smuggled from the mint before the issue was cancelled. A wedding party and corporate greed form the background of The Eve of the Wedding (1980). An American businessman hosts a Polterabend, a German fest marked by riotous behavior, on the eve of his daughter’s wedding, and the house in which the party takes place is haunted by a poltergeist and eccentric relatives. Amidst all this, a murder takes place.
Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Aloysius “Bill” Comfort is another regularly featured character in Black‘s crime novels. Comfort appears in some of the Theobald books as well as in Outbreak (1968) and The Foursome (1978). Barker died in 1980.