Harry Stephen Keeler
Harry Stephen Keeler (November 3, 1890 – January 22, 1967) was a prolific but little-known American fiction writer, who developed a cult following for his eccentric mysteries. He also wrote science fiction. Biography Born in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west". The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929): Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe. Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once. Early adulthood Keeler's mother was a widow several times over who operated a boarding house popular with theatrical performers. Beginning around age sixteen, Keeler wrote a steady stream of original short stories and serials that were subsequently published in many small pulp magazines of the day. Circa 1910, when Keeler was about twenty, his mother committed him to an insane asylum for reasons unknown. This initialed Keeler's interest in madness, asylums and the predicament of sane people who had been consigned to such institutions. It also gave him a lifelong violent antipathy towards the psychiatric profession. Keeler attended the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. It was at this time that Keeler met his future wife, Hazel Goodwin, whom he would marry in 1919. After graduation, he took a job as an electrician in a steel mill, working by day and writing by night. A notable early work was the 1915 science fiction story "John Jones' Dollar", originally published in a magazine entitled The Black Cat. A reprint would appear in an early (1927) issue of Amazing Stories, the first American science fiction pulp. In the story, a single invested dollar has by the 33rd century grown to a fortune as a result of compound interest. With E. P. Dutton Eight of Keeler's earliest works first appeared in pulp fiction magazines like Complete Novel and Top Notch. His first four novels were originally released in England by Hutchinson, beginning in 1924 with The Voice of the Seven Sparrows. Beginning in 1927, E. P. Dutton took over publication of Keeler's novels in the US. Between 1927 and 1942, Dutton released 37 novels by Keeler.