GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #22

NURSE SARAH KEATE


 Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, attended Wesleyan University, married, and traveled extensively throughout the world with her husband.  She turned to writing to escape boredom and subsequently restricted her efforts to fictional crime.  Her first five books were about the detective team of Sarah Keate, a middle-aged spinster nurse, and Lance O'Leary, a promising young police detective in an unnamed Midwestern city.  The unlikely duo functions very effectively despite Nurse Keate's penchant for stumbling into dangerous situations from which she must be rescued.  She is inquisitive and supplies O'Leary with considerable information.  By the end of the 1930s Mignon G. Eberhart was the leading female crime novelist in America and, next to Agatha Christie, was one of the highest paid female crime novelists in the world.  Her short stories appeared regularly in all of the most popular magazines and during her long career she wrote 59 novels, the last being published in 1988.  When Eberhart introduced Sarah Keate as a character it was still relatively rare to have a female lead in novel-length detective stories.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1929 "The Patient in Room 18"/  1930 "While the Patient Slept" (This book won the $5000 first prize in a Doubleday Doran best mystery of the year contest)/  1930 "The Mystery of Hunting's End"/  1931 "From This Dark Stairway"/  1932 "Murder by an Aristocrat"/  1942 "Wolf in Man's Clothing"/  1954 "Man Missing".

Short stories:

"The Night Watch Mystery" (Mystery Magazine Aug 1933)/  "Marked for Death" (Mystery Magazine Nov 1933)/  "Murder on the Wall" (Mystery Magazine Jan 1934)/  "The Old Man's Diamond" (Mystery Magazine Feb 1934)/  "The Empty Inn" (Mystery Magazine Mar 1934)

FILMS

"While the Patient Slept" First National, 1935.  Aline MacMahon (Keate), Guy Kibbee (Lance O'Leary), Allen Jenkins, Henry O'Neill, Lyle Talbot.  Director: Ray Enright.  The son of a wealthy invalid is killed when he tries to steal a statue of a small elephant from his dying father's room.

"The Murder of Dr. Harrigan" First National, 1936.  Kay Linaker (renamed Nurse Sally Keating and now younger), Ricardo Cortez, Robert Strange, Mary Astor.  Director: Frank McDonald.  Based on "From This Dark Stairway".  Both the chief surgeon and the director of a private hospital are murdered during a quarrel over a new ether formula.

"Murder by an Aristocrat" First National, 1936.  Marguerite Churchill (Keating), Talbot, William Davidson, Stuart Holmes.  Director: McDonald.  Called in to tend a member of a distinguished family who has been accidentally shot, Nurse Keating discovers that a deliberate attempt was made on her patient's life.

"The Great Hospital Mystery" 20th Century Fox, 1937.  Jane Darwell (an older Keating), Sally Blane, Thomas Beck.  Director: James Tinling.  A hospital patient, witness to murder and in fear of his own life, pretends to die.

"The Patient in Room 18" WB, 1938.  Ann Sheridan (back to Sarah Keate), Patric Knowles (O'Leary), Rosella Towne.  Director: Crane Wilbur.  A wealthy hospital patient is killed and radium is stolen.  Detective O'Leary, in the hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown, takes charge of the investigation over the protests of his nurse.

"Mystery House" WB, 1938.  Sheridan, Dick Purcell (O'Leary), Anne Nagel, Sheila Bromley.  Director: Noel Smith.  Based on "The Mystery of Hunting's End".  When the daughter of a supposed suicide summons to her home all the people who had been there the night her father died, two deaths occur.  O'Leary and Keate solve the murders.

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