Cyril Hare

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Cyril Hare was the pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (September 4, 1900 Mickleham, Surrey - August 25, 1958 Mickleham, Surrey), an English judge and crime writer.

He was the son of a merchant who ran the family firm of wine and spirit importers Matthew Clark & Sons. He was educated at St Aubyn's, Rottingdean, and at Rugby. He studied at New College, Oxford (where he heard William Archibald Spooner say in a sermon that 'now we see through a dark glassly'), from where he graduated with a First in History. Then he studied law and was called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1924. His pseudonym is a mixture of Hare Court, where he worked in the chambers of Ronald Oliver, and Cyril Mansions, Battersea, where he set up residence after marrying Mary Barbara Lawrence in 1933. They had one son, Charles Gordon Clark (clergyman, later dry stone waller), and two daughters, Alexandra Mary Gordon Clark (Lady Alexandra Wedgwood, architectural historian) and Cecilia Mary Gordon Clark (Cecilia Snell, musician).

As a young man and during the early days of World War II Clark toured as a judge's marshal, an experience he used in 'Tragedy at Law'. Between 1942 and 1945 he worked at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. At the beginning of the war he served a short time at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and the wartime civil service with many temporary members appears in With a Bare Bodkin. In 1950 he was appointed county court judge in Surrey. His best known novel is Tragedy at Law, in which he drew on his legal expertise and in which he introduced Francis Pettigrew. Needless to say, this eccentric and slightly crabby barrister-hero, was a Temple man. His other detective was a very large police officer, Inspector Mallett, with a vast appetite. Perhaps Hare's greatest literary contributions are his short stories, mostly written for the London Evening Standard.

[edit] Works

• Tenant for Death (1937)
• Death Is No Sportsman (1938)
• Suicide Excepted (1939)
• The Old Flame
• Tragedy at Law (1942)
• With a Bare Bodkin (1946)
• The Magic Bottle, a children book (1946)
• When the Wind Blows (US title The Wind Blows Death, 1949)
• An English Murder (1951) "It was going to be a pleasant weekend but this typical English Christmas party found itself snowbound in a castle, with Death as an uninvited guest. It takes the combined efforts of Dr. Bottwink, a Czech refugee, and Sergeant Rogers of Scotland Yard to solve three baffling murders."^[1]
• That Yew Tree's Shade (US title Death Walks the Woods, 1954)
• The House of Warbeck, a play (1955)
• He Should Have Died Hereafter (US title Untimely Death, 1958)
• Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare (US title Death among Friends, 1959, edited by Michael Gilbert)

[edit] References