Short answers, pulled from the story.
Eric Walter Blom (the 20th of August 1888 - the 11th of April 1959) was a Swiss-born, British-naturalised music critic and lexicographer. He is best known as the editor of the 5th edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, published in 1954, which he expanded from six volumes to nine.
Blom wrote that Rachmaninoff did not have the individuality of Taneyev or Medtner, was technically gifted but severely limited, and that his music was monotonous in texture. He also predicted that the popular success of Rachmaninoff's works in his lifetime was not likely to last. New York critic Harold C. Schonberg later called this "one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference."
Eric Blom expanded Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians to nine volumes for the 5th edition in 1954. His predecessor H. C. Colles had kept the dictionary at five volumes for the 3rd edition (1927) and six volumes for the 4th edition (1940).
Yes, in 1941 Blom wrote a detective novel called Death on the Down Beat under the pseudonym Sebastian Farr. The plot centres on the shooting of a conductor during a performance of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. The book was republished in 2022 under the British Library Crime Classics imprint.
Blom had requested that the organist play J. S. Bach's final chorale prelude, Vor Deinen Thron tret' ich zu Dir, at his funeral. The instruction was misunderstood: the Barcarolle from Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann was played instead.
Grove V, published in 1954, remained the standard edition of Grove's Dictionary until the New Grove was released in 1980. It was reprinted in 1966, 1968, 1970, 1973, and 1975 during that period.