Francis Duncan (writer)
{{short description|English writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}}
Francis Duncan was the pen name of William Underhill (1918–1988), a British writer who published over twenty works of detective fiction between 1938 and 1959.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/03/murder-for-christmas-mystery-of-author-francis-duncan|last=Thorpe|first=Vanessa|title=Solved: mystery of Christmas whodunnit that was a hit 66 years after publication|website=The Observer|date=3 January 2016}} Later in his career he also wrote five historical romances (as Hilary West) and children's fiction (as Robert Preston).{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2016/jan/10/new-labour-benefited-millions|title=Letter: How I killed off mystery writer|website=The Observer|date=10 January 2016}} Underhill's detective works follow the conventions of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and mostly feature one of two detective characters – Peter Justice or Mordecai Tremaine.{{cite web|last=Cowdrey|first=Katherine|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/vintage-publish-francis-duncan-murder-mystery-series-330246|title=Vintage to publish Francis Duncan murder mystery series|website=The Bookseller|date=20 May 2016}} Largely neglected after his death in 1988, the success of a reprint of his 1949 novel Murder for Christmas in 2015 has led to further works being brought back into print.
Biography
Born in Bristol in 1918 to a working-class family (his father was a docker at Avonmouth), Underhill obtained a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth's Hospital school, but was unable to afford to attend university.{{cite web|url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1078711/francis-duncan.html?tab=penguin-biography|title=Biography: Francis Duncan|website=Penguin Books|access-date=17 January 2021}} Underhill began writing in his spare time to supplement his income as a debt collector for Bristol City Council. He married Sylvia Henly in 1938 and had two children – Kathryn in 1943 and Derek in 1949.
In World War II he registered as a conscientious objector and volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a medical orderly in France shortly after D-Day. His son, Derek, recalls his father saying that his most successful writing period was during World War II, when his time off-duty gave him the freedom to write, and there was a ready market for escapist detective fiction. After World War II, there was a national shortage of teachers and he was given training to be a primary school teacher. After undertaking an external economics degree he later became a lecturer in economics and history at a college of further education. He died of a heart attack in 1988.
Detective fiction
His novels were moderately successful but, owing to his pseudonym, he remained virtually unknown and his books soon went out of print. A reprint of his 1949 novel Murder for Christmas in November 2015 proved commercially and critically successful, leading the publisher Vintage Books to put out a call for information about the author, about whom they had no details. The family contacted the publisher after seeing the reprint in a branch of Waterstones. Five of his novels featuring Mordecai Tremaine, a former tobacconist and lover of romance novels who dabbles in amateur detective work, have now been reprinted.{{cite web|url=https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/francis-duncan/|title=Francis Duncan|website=Fantastic Fiction|access-date=17 January 2021}}{{cite web|url=http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/francis-duncan.htm|title=Francis Duncan|website=Classic Crime Fiction|access-date=17 January 2021}}
=Peter Justice series=
=Mordecai Tremaine series=
=Standalone novels=
References
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Category:English crime fiction writers
Category:English mystery writers
Category:People educated at Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, Bristol
Category:English conscientious objectors