Cortland Fitzsimmons(1893-1949)

Mystery writer and screenwriter Cortland Fitzsimmons was born on 19 June, 1893 in Richmond Hills, a middle class Long Island neighborhood located in the New York City borough of Queens. He was the only child of Mattie Greensword Fitzsimmons. Of his father little is known, at least by this writer. By 1910 his mother was a widow and the two were living in Brooklyn with a boarder named Charles Williams. Interestingly, Williams was a book seller, the same profession Cortland would follow after college. Cortland received his higher education at New York University and City College. Before turning to writing full time in 1934, he had been a successful salesman for book distributor Baker and Taylor and the American News Co. and later sales manager for Viking Press.

Cortland is primarily remembered as a mystery writer with such titles as "The Manville Murders, A Mystery Novel" (1930), "The Bainbridge Mystery" (1930), "No Witness: A Mystery Novel" (1932), "70,000 Witnesses: A Football Mystery" (1932), "Death on the Diamond: A Baseball Mystery" (1934), "Crimson Ice: A Hockey Mystery" (1935), "The Longest Night" (1936), "Mystery at Hidden Harbor" (1938), "The Girl in the Cage" with magician John Mulholland (1939), "The Evil Men Do"(1941) and "Death Rings a Bell" (1942). In 1946 he collaborated with his wife, the former Muriel Simpson, on a cookbook entitled "You Can Cook If You Can Read".

Cortland Fitzsimmons died in Los Angeles on 25 July, 1949 at the age of 56. He was survived by his widow Muriel, who would follow him in death in 1957 at the age of 63.