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Boucher, Anthony

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on December 21, 2005 at 5:12:30 pm

Sources: Wikipedia and Mysterynet

Anthony Boucher (August 21, 1911 - April 29, 1968) was an American science fiction editor and writer of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of (mostly) mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle.

He was born William Anthony Parker White in Oakland, California, into a family based in medicine. He earnt a bachelor of arts degree in 1932 from the University of Southern California, and earned his M.A. (with honors in German and Spanish) at U.C. Berkeley in 1934. Indeed, he was a natural linguist and later translated works into English from French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. (He was also proficient in Sanskrit!) During his college years, Tony was active in Little Theater as actor, director and playwright. Opera was also an early passion.

In 1935, he became a theater and music critic for United Progressive News in Los Angeles, and write his first mystery novel, The Case of the Seven of Calvary, a year later. I once asked him about the origin of his second name. "I invented it for mysteries," he said. "Boucher was my grandmother's maiden name. She was French-Irish. The 'Anthony' came from a favorite saint of mine. Plus, it's part of my legal first name."

Tony married Phyllis Price in the spring of 1938 (they subsequently had two sons), and his second mystery novel, The Case of the Crumpled Knave, was published in 1939. Boucher's detective, Fergus O'Breen, was conceived as a kind of West Coast Ellery Queen with an Irish brogue, and Tony wrote three more O'Breen novels into 1942. He was also writing as H.H. Holmes (Nine Times Nine), utilizing his Roman Catholic background in the creation of crime-solving nun Sister Ursula.

Tony saide: "Aware of my ongoing obsession with Conan Doyle's legendary detective, most of my friends assumed that 'H.H. Holmes' was derived from the great Sherlock. Not so. Holmes was an actually alias for one of the outstanding criminals of the century, Herman W. Mudgett. Later, I used Mudgett's real name for some of my printed verse."

Boucher had always been deeply involved in the genres of fantasy, mystery and horror (having sold his first story, at age 16, to Weird Tales), but it was not until 1940 that he added science fiction to the list. "SF was a 'cult' genre in those days," Boucher told me. "The boom in science fiction didn't take place until after the second World War. I was drawn into it by some of my local writer friends."

Tony became active in a Southern California group known as the "Manana Literary Society." Its members included some of the major talents in early science fiction: Robert A. Heinlein, Edmond Hamilton, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner and Cleve Cartmill. Tony's second H.H. Holmes mystery novel, Rocket to the Morgue (1942) was based directly on the group--and was dedicated to them.

This proved to be Tony's last novel, although he continued, throughout his career to write short fiction for both the mystery and SF/fantasy markets.

By 1942, he was into what most of his admirers claim was his "true vocation"--that of reviewer and critic. He began reviewing in the San Francisco Chronicle, expanding to the Chicago Sun Times, and the New York Herald Tribune, but his major critical contribution appeared in the New York Times Book Review beginning in 1951. In all (to the year of his death), Tony wrote more than 850 weekly review columns under the heading "Criminals at Large." He won three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America for this outstanding body of criticism and was recognized as the nation's foremost authority on crime fiction, without question the most influential, as well as the most popular, mystery critic of his period.

He was no less an expert on true crime, editing The Pocket Book of True Crime Stories in 1943, and later helming the highly-regarded True Crime Detective.

The 1940s proved to be a very busy and productive decade for Boucher. In 1945 he launched into a spectacular three-year radio career, plotting more than 100 episodes for "The Adventures of Ellery Queen," while also providing plots for the bulk of the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas. By the summer of '46 he had created his own mystery series for the airwaves, "The Casebook of Gregory Hood." ("I was turning out three scripts each week for as many shows," he stated. "It was a mix of hard work and great fun.")

Tony left dramatic radio in 1948, "mainly because I was putting in a lot of hours working with J. Francis McComas in creating what soon became The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. We got it off the ground in '49 and saw it take hold solidly by 1950. This was a major creative challenge and although I was involved in a lot of other projects, I stayed with F&SF into 1958."

Indeed, throughout his years with the magazine, Boucher was certainly involved in "a lot of other projects." Among them:

• Supplying the SF and crime markets with new fiction.

• Teaching an informal writing class from his home in Berkeley.

• Continuing his Sunday mystery columns for the New York Times Book Review.

• Functioning as chief critic for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

• Reviewing SF and fantasy (as H.H. Holmes) for the New York Herald Tribune.

• Editing True Crime Detective.

• Supervising the Mercury Mystery Line and (later) the Dell Great Mystery Library.

• Hosting "Great Voices," his series of historical opera recordings for Pacifica Radio.

• Serving (in 1951) as president of Mystery Writers of America.

In addition to all of this, Tony was a devoted poker player, a political activist, a rabid sport fan (football, basketball, track, gymnastics and rugby), an active "Sherlockian" in the Baker Street Irregulars, and a spirited chef.

In 1961 he became a regular reviewer for Opera News. In 1962 he supervised the line of Collier mystery classics, and in 1963 became editor of Best Detective Stories of the Year, while continuing to conduct his "Great Voices" radio show and provide reviews for the Times and Ellery Queen. Other passions included SF conventions (where he functioned as a witty and erudite speaker and panelist), Elizabethan drama, mathematics, religion and pre-history. He died of lung cancer on April 29, 1968.

The annual Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) was named in his honour.