Delano Ames
Delano Ames was born on the 29th of May 1906 in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. His grandfather, Columbus Delano, had served as Secretary of the Interior under President Ulysses S. Grant. That heritage suggested a life of public distinction. Ames chose fiction instead, becoming a writer whose characters would be compared to the finest detectives in the genre. What drove a man with such a political pedigree toward the mystery shelves? And why would he ultimately make his home not in Ohio or New York, but in Spain?
Benjamin Ames worked for the local newspaper in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, the town where Delano had been born. In 1917, Benjamin moved the family west to New Mexico. Delano's mother was Isabel Kirk Ames. Despite the itinerant geography of his early years, Delano eventually attended both Yale and Columbia universities. Those two institutions gave him an education that stretched across some of the most rigorous academic programs in the country. By 1929, he had settled in New York City, where he would marry an Australian-born writer named Maysie Coucher in Greenwich Village.
Maysie Coucher published her fiction under the pen name Maysie Greig. Born in 1901, she had built a prolific career writing light-hearted romance novels. Her work and Ames' occupied very different literary territory. She pursued romance; he was steering toward crime fiction. The marriage ended on the 17th of April 1937. Maysie continued writing and lived until 1971. For Ames, the divorce marked a turn eastward, toward England and a new chapter of his life.
She Shall Have Murder, published in 1948 by Hodder and Stoughton, introduced readers to Dagobert and Jane Brown. The couple were amateurs who solved crimes together as husband and wife. The series ran to twelve novels in total, from 1948 to 1959. Ames built a playful dynamic into the pair. He set them loose on a range of mysteries that kept readers engaged for more than a decade. Corpse Diplomatique, the 1950 entry in the series, became his best-known and most widely available title. Penguin Books later brought it to a mass-market audience, extending its reach well beyond the original hardback edition.
The New York Times reviewed the series and called Dagobert "amiable," comparing him to Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey. That was meaningful praise for a writer working at the lighter end of detective fiction. Kirkus Reviews was less admiring. The publication described 1959's For Old Crime's Sake as "fuzz-brained fluff for light entertainment." In the United States, that same novel appeared under the title Lucky Jane. She Shall Have Murder was also adapted into a film of the same name in 1950, bringing the Browns to a new kind of audience.
In the years following his 1937 divorce, Ames settled in England and married his second wife, Kit. When World War II arrived, he was assigned as a British intelligence officer. The role placed him at the intersection of literature and conflict. Alongside his intelligence duties, Ames contributed to mythology anthologies and took on translation work for Larousse in France. One of those translation projects was a history of the piano originally written in French by Henry Closson. Paul Elek published the finished translation in 1947. By 1960, he would bring that range of experience to bear on a new detective series, this time set in Spain.
The Man in the Tricorn Hat, published by Methuen in 1960, launched Ames' second detective series. Its central figure was Juan Lorca, an officer of the Spanish Civil Guard who solved local mysteries. Three more novels followed, the last of them being The Man with Three Passports in 1967. Where Dagobert and Jane Brown had been enthusiastic amateurs, Lorca was a professional embedded in a specific community and a specific country. Ames' pull toward Spain deepened in the years that followed. His last published work was an introduction he wrote for a photography book about Spain, which appeared in 1971. He died in Madrid in January 1987. Rue Morgue Press reprinted She Shall Have Murder in 2008, sixty years after Hodder and Stoughton had first published it. That reprint gave Ames' most beloved characters a new generation of readers.
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Common questions
Who was Delano Ames and what did he write?
Delano Ames was an American detective fiction writer born on the 29th of May 1906 in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. He wrote around 20 books, including a twelve-novel series featuring the amateur husband-and-wife detectives Dagobert and Jane Brown, and a later series starring a Spanish Civil Guard officer named Juan Lorca. He died in Madrid in January 1987.
Who was Delano Ames' grandfather?
Delano Ames' grandfather was Columbus Delano, who served as Secretary of the Interior under President Ulysses S. Grant. Columbus Delano gave his grandson both his surname and a political lineage that stood in notable contrast to Ames' career in detective fiction.
What books make up the Dagobert and Jane Brown series by Delano Ames?
The Dagobert and Jane Brown series comprises twelve novels, from She Shall Have Murder in 1948 to Lucky Jane in 1959. The best-known entry is Corpse Diplomatique, published in 1950 and later reprinted by Penguin Books. Hodder and Stoughton published most of the series in the United Kingdom.
What did critics say about Delano Ames' detective novels?
Critical reception was generally positive, though reviewers described the work as light entertainment rather than high art. The New York Times called Dagobert Brown "amiable" and compared him to Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey. Kirkus Reviews described 1959's For Old Crime's Sake as "fuzz-brained fluff for light entertainment."
What did Delano Ames do during World War II?
Ames served as a British intelligence officer during World War II. He was living in England at the time, where he had settled after his 1937 divorce from Australian-born writer Maysie Coucher Ames, who published under the pen name Maysie Greig.
When and where did Delano Ames die?
Delano Ames died in Madrid, Spain, in January 1987. He had developed a lasting connection to Spain through his Juan Lorca detective series and his final published work, an introduction to a photography book about Spain that appeared in 1971.
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3 references cited across the entry
- 2NewsAmateur Hawkshaws; SHE SHALL HAVE MURDER. By Delano AmesOctober 30, 1949
- 3NewsFor Old Crime's Sake by Delano AmesApril 8, 1959