[10] Some of Kahn's more celebrated signings include John Creasey, Patricia Highsmith, Julian Symons, Dick Francis, and Tony Hillerman.
[11] Both her training and her aspirations at that time were primarily in the visual arts; aside from being a published author, Kahn was both a painter and a sculptor, as well as a stage and costume designer.
However, when one of the handful she ended up accepting, The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis, went on to win the Mystery Writers of America's annual Edgar Award for best first novel of 1947, Kahn quickly reconsidered.
[3]In fact, few better examples could be found of Kahn's tough-love approach to editing than her 1965 collaboration with the then largely unknown John Ball; in coaxing from him the Edgar Award-winning In the Heat of the Night (itself the basis of the multi-award-winning film of the same name, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger), Kahn's accomplishment, at least as perceived by critic and fellow editor Otto Penzler, was Svengali-like: Ball, in spite of creating the iconic Virgil Tibbs, was an excruciatingly bad writer, his prose more wooden than Sherwood Forest.
He had a terrific idea for a novel, assigning a black policeman down South to work with a redneck sheriff, and sent it off to the greatest mystery editor who ever lived, Joan Kahn.
She painstakingly worked with Ball to rewrite again and again, finally pulling a book out of him that was good enough to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award.
[20] Looking back in 1985, fifteen years after the fact, and again almost two decades later, Hansen recalls both the initial agonizing delay in publication and the ensuing mutual incredulity when Kahn finally came to the rescue: But before there were reviews, there had to be a published book.
[21] When Kahn, magisterial mystery editor at Harper & Row, accepted this novel for publication, she wrote my agent, "Where's this writer been hiding?"
[22]Hillerman had an analogous tale to tell (a three-year travail, complete with Kahn cast as the deus ex machina), recounted shortly after his death by Jack Adrian in The Independent: His first book, The Blessing Way (1970), took him three years to write and then three months to rewrite after Joan Kahn, the mystery editor at Harper's, sent him a detailed critique, telling him to "beef up" one of his secondary characters.
"[23]The exact circumstances of Kahn's departure from Harper & Row in early 1980 remain unclear; contemporary press accounts offer no specifics.
I can't think of any other situation in which this – deception is the wrong word – in which this kind of collaboration was kept under cover.According to Lord, Mary Francis had all but conceded as much almost two decades earlier, but begged that her remarks remain confidential, adding: Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them but believe me, Graham, it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility.
[32]For his part, Mr. Francis insisted he had written the stories, but had, in each instance, received his wife's invaluable assistance both before and after the fact, in terms of research and editing, respectively.
[33] At the time of his wife's death one year later, Francis did not depart significantly from his previous statements (stressing again that she was "a great researcher" who "helped" with his "English"), adding: I couldn't have written the books without her.
[34]A piece by Ann Carter, published in The Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel shortly after the Lord biography, while downplaying the importance - not to mention the possibility - of determining exactly who contributed what, does lend strong support to Kahn's contention that Mrs. Francis' contribution extended well beyond what had been publicly acknowledged (as do the contemporaneous comments of Francis family friend Brough Scott, broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live,[35] as well as fellow crime writer H.R.F.
[36] Citing numerous passages which seem to reflect a typically 'feminine' viewpoint (such as attention to makeup, hairstyle, wardrobe and interior decor, as well as the presence of strong female characters, often in traditionally male-assigned roles), Carter recounts an earlier conversation with the author: When I asked about some of these factors in a 1984 interview, Francis said – not once, but several times – that they were to "fill up the book."