He was primarily known for a pair of darkly humorous novels published by Simon & Schuster[1] -- Sing a Song of Homicide (1940) and A Pocketful of Clues (1941) -- written in rapid succession in Langham's late twenties, after which Langham stopped writing and disappeared entirely from the public eye for almost sixty years until his death in 1999.
Both novels featured the crime-solving duo of Ethel and Sammy Abbott, a couple some found reminiscent of Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man series.
[2] Sammy was a special agent working for the district attorney of Santa Monica, California, where the series was set.
[3] Sing a Song of Homicide was (very loosely) adapted for the screen by Jonathan Latimer as the 1942 feature film Night in New Orleans.
And he claimed that throughout his twenties he'd worked as a civil engineer, carpenter, salesman, gunsmith, and census taker, in addition to singing.