Amy Myers

Amy Myers (born 3 August 1938) is a British mystery writer. She is best known for her Marsh and Daughter mystery series, featuring a writing team consisting of a wheel-chair bound ex-policeman and his daughter, and for another series, featuring a Victorian era chef, Auguste Didier.^[1] Myers' books have been favourably reviewed in Library Journal,^[2][3] Publishers Weekly,^[4] Booklist,^[5] and Kirkus Reviews.^[6] Myers has also been published many times in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.^[7] Janet Hutchings, the magazine's longtime editor, called Myers "one of our best and most frequent contributors of historicals" (i.e., historical mysteries).^[8]

Myers was born in Barnehurst,^[9] Kent (part of Greater London since 1965) in 1938. While working in publishing, Myers met her American soon-to-be husband. She oversaw the publication of an autobiography by the English bullfighter Henry Higgins; she met him, his co-author and the co-author's cousin, James Myers.^[10] Myers was born in Buffalo, New York, US, but had spent his adult life in Europe.^[11]

For ten years, the Myers maintained a commuter marriage, dividing their time between Paris, where James worked, and London, where Amy worked.^[1][10][12] During her stays in Paris, Myers dreamed up the character for her first mystery series, Auguste Didier, a half-English, half-French chef who reluctantly dabbled in detection during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.^[12] The couple now live in Kent full-time.^[2]

Like the character Luke Frost in Myers' Marsh and Daughter series, Myers was once a publisher. She was a director of the now-defunct publishing firm of William Kimber & Co. Ltd., which specialised in war and theatrical memoirs, autobiographies, biographies and tales of hauntings.^[9] She published her first mystery, Murder in Pug's Parlor, in 1986. In 1988, she turned to writing full-time.

After eleven Auguste Didier mysteries, Myers introduced the former police detective Peter Marsh and his daughter Georgia in The Wickenham Murders in 2004. The father–daughter team writes true-crime novels in which they expose an injustice or sleuth out the answer to an unsolved crime from the distant past.# The Marshes' investigations almost inevitably involve them with present-day murders stemming from secrets involving the past.^[13]

Myers launched a third series in 2007 with Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner. Wasp, a Victorian era chimney sweep in East London, solves crimes with his former apprentice, Ned.^[13] Myers' fourth series, written with the help of her car buff husband, began in 2011 with Classic in the Barn.^[11] That series features a modern-day classic-car restorer in Kent, Jack Colby, who helps the police with cases involving classic cars.^[13]

In 2017, Myers introduced yet another cosy mystery series, featuring Nell Drury, a female French-trained chef in 1925 Kent when such a thing was a real anomaly. The first novel is titled Dancing with Death.^[14]

For her romances, historical sagas and suspense novels, Myers created the pseudonym Harriet Hudson, although she has occasionally also used the names Laura Daniels and Alice Carr.^[10][12]

Myers also writes reviews of other books at the online crime and thriller magazine Shots.^[12]

Many of her crime novels are available in German translation.

Auguste Didier series

• 1986 Murder in Pug's Parlour
• 1986 Murder in the Limelight
• 1989 Murder at the Masque
• 1991 Murder Makes an Entree
• 1992 Murder Under the Kissing Bough
• 1994 Murder in the Smokehouse
• 1995 Murder at the Music Hall
• 1996 Murder in the Motor Stable
• 1999 Murder with Majesty
• 2000 Murder in the Queen's Boudoir

Marsh and Daughter series

• 2004 The Wickenham Murders
• 2005 Murder in Friday Street
• 2006 Murder in Hell's Corner
• 2007 Murder and the Golden Goblet
• 2008 Murder in the Mist
• 2009 Murder Takes the Stage
• 2010 Murder on the Old Road
• 2011 Murder in Abbot's Folly
• 2022 The Maid of Kent Murders

Tom Wasp series

• 2007 Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner
• 2010 Tom Wasp and the Newgate Knocker
• 2019 Tom Wasp and the Seven Deadly Sins

Classic Car series

• 2011 Classic in the Barn
• 2012 Classic in the Clouds
• 2012 Classic Calls the Shots
• 2013 Classic Mistake
• 2014 Classic in the Pits
• 2015 Classic Cashes In
• 2015 Classic in the Dock
• 2016 Classic at Bay

Nell Drury series

• 2017 Dancing with Death
• 2018 Death at the Wychbourne Follies
• 2020 Death and the Singing Birds

Under the pseudonym Harriet Hudson

• 1989 Look for Me by Moonlight
• 1991 When Nightingales Sang
• 1992 The Wooing of Katie May
• 1993 The Girl from Gadsby's
• 1998 Into the Sunlight
• 1999 Not in our Stars
• 2000 The Sun in Glory
• 2000 To My Own Desire
• 2001 Quinn
• 2002 Tomorrow's Garden
• 2003 Catching the Sunlight
• 2005 Applemere Summer
• 2007 The Windy Hill
• 2007 The Stationmaster's Daughter
• 2010 The Man Who Came Back

The Ashden Quartet (set in the English homefront during the First World War at the rectory in the Sussex village of Ashden)

• 1996 The Last Summer (under the pseudonym Alice Carr)
• 1999 Dark Harvest (under the pseudonym Alice Carr)
• 1999 Winter Roses (under the pseudonym Harriet Hudson)
• 2001 Songs of Spring (under the pseudonym Harriet Hudson)

Under the pseudonym Laura Daniels

• 1995 Pleasant Vices
• 1995 The Lakenham Folly

Short story collections

• 2006 Murder, 'Orrible Murder! Published by Crippen & Landru

• Amy Myers' official website
• Crime in the Fast Lane, where James Myers blogs in the guise of his wife's character, Jack Colby, and about classic cars