Editing E. C. R. Lorac (section)

===Literary career===

She published her first detective novel in 1931; this was ''The Murder on the Burrows'', a well-crafted debut which launched her detective Macdonald on a career that was to last for more than a quarter of a century. Nine Lorac novels were published by Sampson Low, earning increasingly favourable reviews, before she moved to the more prestigious imprint of [[Collins Crime Club]] in 1936, with Crime Counter Crime, set during a General Election. She remained a Crime Club stalwart for the rest of her life.

[[John Curran (literary scholar)|John Curran]], historian of the Crime Club, argues that she was especially well served by the designers of the cover artwork for her books, and this is no doubt one of the factors that has made her work especially collectable. First editions in the attractive dust jackets of the period can now change hands—on the rare occasions when they come on to the market—for thousands of pounds.

She was equally at home with urban and rural settings. Her early books include ''Murder in St John’s Wood'' and ''Murder in Chelsea'', while two other books set in London, ''Bats in the Belfry'' and the war-time mystery ''Murder by Matchlight''.

Like Rosanne Manaton, a character in her ''Checkmate to Murder'', she was artistic and had an interest in ski-ing; the winter sport plays a central part in her Carol Carnac novel ''Crossed Skis'', also published by the British Library.
In November 1940, having been evacuated to Devon, she wrote to a friend about the horrors of living through a war. Referring to the death of one of her oldest friends, killed while fire-fighting, she said: “Most of my other friends have been bombed or burnt out of their homes. What a sickening insanity it all is.”