Patrick Quentin was a pseudonym used by a writing team with varying personnel: Hugh Callingham Wheeler

Hugh Callingham Wheeler (shown at right) (1912-1987)

Richard Wilson Webb (1901-1970)

Martha Mott Kelly (1906-2005?)

Mary Louise Aswell (1902-1984)

'Patrick Quentin' also wrote under the names 'Q Patrick' and 'Jonathan Stagge'.

Webb was born in Burnham-On-Sea, Somerset, and moved to the US in 1926, working as a researcher for a chemical company in Philadelphia. He became an American citizen in 1942. In 1931 he had started collaborating with Martha Mott Kelly, a partnership which produced two novels. When Kelly got married, Webb found a new writing companion in Mary Louise Aswell, producing two more novels (in the meantime, he had written another novel all by himself).

In 1936 Webb asked his old friend Hugh Wheeler, a Londoner who had moved to the US in 1934, to join him in developing a new series character, Peter Duluth. Wheeler (below) had attended the University of London, graduating with honours in 1933, and emigrating to the US in 1934. In 1942 he, too, became an American citizen, serving in the Army Medical Corps during WWII. Webb stopped writing in the early Fifties. All the "Patrick Quentin" novels from 1952 on were written by Wheeler alone.

The authors' series detectives include Peter Duluth, a theatrical producer, NY Homicide Lieutenant Timothy Trant, and (as Jonathan Stagge) Dr. Hugh Westlake, a small-town physician, and his daughter Dawn Westlake.