John Haslette Vahey
John George Haslette Vahey (5 March 1881 – 15 June 1938) was a versatile and prolific Northern Irish author of detective fiction in the genre's Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s.
Vahey was born in Belfast, Ireland on 5 March 1881,[1] the second son of Herbert Vahey (c. 1839 – 6 December 1910),[2] an Inland Revenue Inspector, and Jane Lowry (c. 1850 – 2 April 1930),[3] who had married on 20 February 1879, at the Weslyn Church in Donegall Square, Belfast.
[5] The 1901 census found Vahey living with his parents at 4 Sydenham Avenue, Victoria, County Down, Ireland.
He abandoned this career when he started writing fiction,[6] only returning to it during the First World War where he served in Wales as a Corporal in the Army Pay Corps.
Herbert has continued with architecture, but was also writing both short fiction for the magazines and published two novels in 1911, both with Stanley Paul.
[note 2] The first, A Prisoner in Paradise, about a man who finds his home in the tropics, was favourably received.
Vahey married Gertrude Crowe Barendt (c. 1880 – 6 November 1958)[16] on 12 June in Poole, Dorset, England.
[17] The couple lived in London after the war, and at 5 Elms Avenue, Hendon, Middlesex, in the mid-1920s, and eventually settled at Branksome Park, in Bournemouth.
[18] Moss reports that the jacket biography on Loder's Two Dead (1934), states that Vahey's initial attempt at writing a novel was when he was in bed convalescent.
The book was very well received, judging by the reviewers' quotations in the publisher's display advertisements:[19] Five of the John Halsette novels were set in Latin America.
He also published one illustrated children's book of verse' The New Zoo, and a collection of essays and sketches on fishing, which he selected and edited, The Humane Angler.
However the identification is without doubt as Vahey registered copyright in the United States for the books written under this name.
John Mowbray Pearson (11 Feb 1809 – 19 July 1850),[154][155] and a maternal uncle of the same name (fourth quarter of 1838 – ).
[156] Fourteen unique titles[note 67] under this name are listed in The British Library catalogue.
)[159] The British Library Catalogue also gives coincident birth and death dates for John Haslette, Vernon Loder, Henrietta Clandon, Anthony Lang, Walter Proudfoot, and Arthur N. Timony.
Of these titles: All of the Clandon novels were published by Geoffrey Bles who was known for his flair in discovering writing talent.
He was living at Flat 4, Reedley, Lindsay Road, Bournemouth, his widow was his executor and his estate was valued at just over £950.
This is a staggering output, because not only did he have to write the books, but also had all the usual back and forth correspondence on edits, proofs, covers, rights, serialisation etc.
Moss states that: Loder never quite achieved the first rank of detective novelists, and has received scant attention in commentaries of the genre.
Nonetheless, he was a popular, dependable author in the 1930s, and better than many; perhaps a paradigm of the English Golden Age mystery writer.
[41] In 2018 Moss hoped that the reissue of some of the Loder books would help Vahey to be: rediscovered and enjoyed by a new wider readership.
