Mignon G. Eberhart

Mignon Good Eberhart was an American author of mystery novels. By the end of the 1930s, Eberhart had emerged as the preeminent female crime fiction writer in the United States and stood among the most handsomely remunerated female crime authors globally, second only to the renowned Agatha Christie.

Mignonette Good was born in a suburb of Lincoln. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, where she studied English and history. In 1923 she married Alanson C. Eberhart, a civil engineer. After working as a freelance journalist, she became a full-time writer.

Mignon G. Eberhart debuted in 1929 with the crime novel, The Patient in Room 18, starring Sarah Kite, a nurse, and Lance O'Leary, a police detective. This couple appeared in another four novels, While the Patient Slept (1930), The Mystery of Hunting’s End (1930), From This Dark Stairway (1931), and Murder by an Aristocrat (1932) aka Murder of My Patient.

Over the next forty years, she penned over 50 novels and numerous short stories. She adapted eight of her books for film, including While the Patient Slept (1935) and Hasty Wedding (1938).

In 1971, Eberhart received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. She was also president of the Mystery Writers of America. Eberhart continued publishing roughly a book a year until the 1980s. Her final novel, Three Days for Emeralds, was published in 1988.

Mignon G. Eberhart passed away in 1996, and was laid to rest in Long Island National Cemetery. In 2007, a collection of her short stories titled Dead Yesterday and Other Stories was published posthumously by Crippen & Landru.