THE VANISHING OF CAROLYN WELLS

The fruit of “a three-year quest to restore the legacy” of a prolific and pioneering mystery writer who’s dropped almost completely from sight.

Love her or hate her, Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) in her time was widely acknowledged as a force to be reckoned with. Her children’s book series rivaled those produced by Edward Stratemeyer’s syndicate of anonymous writers. Her 81 mystery novels, including 61 starring Fleming Stone, account for less than half of her output of over 180 books—novels, verse collections, anthologies, scrapbooks, autograph books, crossword puzzle books, and screenplays—an oeuvre that made another writer wonder, “Is Carolyn Wells a syndicate?” Her nonsense verse cemented her friendship with art critic and poet Gelett Burgess; her take-no-prisoners approach to collecting material by and about Walt Whitman earned the lasting enmity of bibliophile Vincent Starrett; her mysteries were panned by Dashiell Hammett, John Dickson Carr, and, yes, Kirkus Reviews. Sandwiched between the older Anna Katharine Green and the younger Mary Robert Rinehart, Wells lacked the staying power of the second and so far hasn’t been revived as successfully as the first. Barry, author of Rare Books Uncovered, aims to change that by sharing every scrap of information she’s discovered about Wells’ remarkable career, her reception, and theories about why she’s fallen into such neglect. The result is an engaging but often frustratingly incomplete biography repeatedly interrupted by detailed accounts of how the author acquired, or failed to acquire, access to her research materials, both of them interrupted in turn by a series of chatty footnotes confiding in the reader directly. The resulting combination succeeds in bringing Wells back to life, largely through extensive quotations from her light verse, but gives little sense of any or all of those Fleming Stone novels.

Not a definitive biography, but an indispensable first step toward one.