Helen McCloy Books In Order

Publication Order of Dr. Basil Willing Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Helen McCloy was a published author of fiction. She also wrote using the pen name Helen Clarkson. She is best known for writing American mystery novels. Her full name is Helen Worrell Clarkson McCloy. She also wrote for the television series Le Masque, based on her novel Cue for Murder.

Helen was born on June 6, 1904, in New York City. Her father William worked for a long time as the New York Evening Sun’s managing editor. Her mother was Helen Worrell McCloy and she was a writer as well.

She attended the Brooklyn Friends School, which was seen over by the Quaker community in Brooklyn. She went overseas for further education, going to France and attending the Sorbonne in Paris for 1923 to 1924. From then she went on to work for the Universal News Service, overseen by William Randolph Hearst. She worked there from 1927 to 1932.

She also served as an art critic for the International Studio as well as several more magazines. She also worked as a freelance contributor for publications Parnassus and the London Morning Post. After holding down several jobs abroad, she returned to America in 1932.

She was the originator of the character Dr. Basil Willing. who first appeared in his debut novel of Dance of Death, which was published in 1938. It kicked off the Dr. Basil Willing series with several more books to follow. Willing believed that each criminal leaves behind a set of psychic fingerprints that cannot be hidden with gloves. He was in over a dozen of the author’s novels and even made appearances in short stories by McCloy. Each story ended with an explanation for supernatural events.

She would get married in 1946 to Davis Dresser. He had found success as an author writing using the pen name Brett Halliday and writing novels featuring the character of Mike Shayne. The couple had a daughter together that they named Chloe. Later, the two decided to found their own publishing company that was called the Torquil Publishing Company. They also founded a literary agency together that was called Halliday and McCloy.

Unfortunately, their union was not to last and their marriage came to a conclusion in 1961. Helen kept working and was a co-author of a review column in the fifties and sixties for newspapers in Connecticut. In 1950 she broke new ground when she was elected to be the president of the writing group the Mystery Writers of America. The Mystery Writers of America gave her an Edgar Award in 1954 for her critical work. She also worked to found a chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, setting up their New England chapter in Boston in 1971.

McCloy always had an interest in mysteries having read the Sherlock Holmes stories when she was young. She began to write them on her own in the thirties. Her work would result in her debut novel being published in 1938, Dance of Death. This debut would be followed by more mystery stories from the author.

She wrote Cue for Murder, which was the tale of murder done onstage on Broadway. In her novel Goblin Market, which came out in 1943, different reporters for wire services look into a death somewhere in South America. Her 1944 novel Panic did not have Basil Willing and featured cryptoanalysis.

Dr. Basil Willing appeared again in the 1968 novel Mr. Splitfoot, where he takes shelter with his wife in a house in New England and are living in a home that is allegedly haunted. The title refers to having two sides of nature but also can be interpreted as being a name for the devil. The book was named by H.R.F. Keating to be one of the top crime and mystery novels to be put into print.

A different novel that did well in the Basil Willing series was Through a Glass, Darkly. It came out in 1950 and is described as a supernatural puzzle. It’s a scary story and was a study of the Doppelganger phenomenon. Another successful novel was the 1977 book The Impostor. A woman wakes up from a car accident to find herself in a psychiatric clinic. There her accident is dismissed as part of her delusion. She ends up going away with a man that is not her husband just to get out of the clinic.

Design for Dying, also known as the title Dance of Death, is the first book in the Dr. Basil Willing series. The book was first published in 1938. It is the debut of Dr. Basil Willing and his character.

A strange case emerges when a socialite on the New York scene is discovered dead in a snowbank. Everyone is shocked to find out that it is Kitty Jocelyn, a debutante in society. But perhaps the most shocking detail of her death is the fact that she is examined and found to have died from heatstroke in those frigid temperatures.

There are a lot of questions to get through regarding this death. It was the morning after her coming out party as a debutante. How exactly was it that she wound up in the snowbank? Why does she have on clothes that don’t belong to her?

More and more questions are propping up, so an expert is brought in to help. Dr. Basil Willing is a psychologist, and everyone turns to him and Inspector Foyle to get to the bottom of this and find some answers. There is a long list of the suspects that may have killed her, and they have to run through them all as well as their motives while following up on clues if they are going to solve this.

Can Dr. Willing figure out why a young person died of heatstroke in the winter, and who is behind it? Read this book to find out!

The Man in the Moonlight is the second novel in the Dr. Basil Willing series by Helen McCloy. On a university campus at Yorkville University, Assistant Chief Inspector Foyle comes across the plans for a murder. But then he finds out that a scientists named Dr. Kinradi on campus is dead.

It looks to be a suicide, but Foyle isn’t certain. So he brings in Dr. Basil Willing, a sleuth and psychologist, to help him out. There are plenty of suspects who have motive, but who is the true culprit responsible? Read this book to find out!