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Bruce, Leo

Page history last edited by Jon 13 years ago

 

Leo Bruce (Rupert Croft-Cooke)Leo Bruce (1903-1979) was a pseudonym for Rupert Croft-Cooke, who was born on June 30th in 1903 in Edenbridge, Kent, England.

 

Bruce was educated at Tonbridge School and at Wellington College. He began teaching in Paris as a private tutor when he as just seventeen. His first book was titled Songs of a Sussex Tramp and is a collection of poetry which was published in 1922 when he was just nineteen. Later he spent a self-imposed two year exile in Buenos Aires where, besides teaching English, he founded and edited the journal La Estrella. In 1925 he decided to return to London and pursued a career as a free-lance journalist and writer. Soon afterwards he opened a bookshop in Rochester, Kent where he took up the antiquarian book trade.

 

At the same time he also entered the field of broadcasting, giving a series of radio talks on psychology. In 1930 he traveled abroad again, spending a year in Germany, writing, and later lecturing in English, Switzerland and Spain. He joined the British Army in 1940 and saw service in both Africa and India. After his discharge in 1946 he returned to writing and produced several works reflecting his military experience. He became the book critic for The Sketch in 1947, a position he held until 1953. He was one of the last people to be arrested in Britain for homosexuality. His work appeared in such literary magazines as New Writing, Adelphi, Chapbook, The New Coterie and English Review. In the late 1920s several of his pieces were published in the American magazine, Poetry. He died June 10, 1979.

 

Bibliography

 

Sergeant Beef, a beer-and-darts loving common man in England, is featured in:

 

Case for Three Detectives (1936)

Case Without a Corpse (1937)

Case with Four Clowns (1939)

Case With No Conclusion (1939)

Case with Ropes and Rings (1940)

Case for Sergeant Beef (1947)

Neck and Neck (1951)

Cold Blood (1952)

Murder in Miniature (see below)

 

Carolus Deene, an ex-commando turned schoolmaster in England, is featured in:

 

At Death's Door (1955)

Death of Cold (1956)

Dead for a Ducat (1956)

Dead Man's Shoes (1958)

A Louse for the Hangman (1958)

Our Jubilee is Death (1959)

Jack on the Gallows Tree (1960)

Furious Old Women (1960)

A Bone and a Hank Of Hair (1961)

Die All, Die Merrily (1961)

Nothing Like Blood (1962)

Crack of Doom/Such is Death (1963)

Death in Albert Park (1964)

Death at Hallows End (1965)

Death on the Black Sands (1966)

Death at St Asprey's School (1967)

Death of a Commuter (1967)

Death on Romney Marsh (1968)

Death with Blue Ribbon (1969)

Death on Allhallowe'en (1970)

Death by the Lake (1971)

Death in the Middle Watch (1974)

Death of a Bovver Boy (1974)

Murder in Miniature (1992; 28 stories that feature Beef, Deene, and other characters)

 

As Rupert Croft-Cooke

 

Seven Thunders (1955)

Thief (1960)

Clash by Night (1962)

Paper Albatross (1965)

Three in a Cell (1968)

Nasty Piece of Work (1973)

Conduct Unbecoming (1975)

Comments (1)

nickhay1@... said

at 7:24 pm on Jun 6, 2009

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