Death of a Doll

Hilda Lawrence (1906–1976) was an American author of classic mysteries. Born in Baltimore and educated in New York, she worked in the clippings department of Macmillan Publishing. She wrote four novels across a brief writing career that spanned the 1940s. The first, Blood on the Snow, published in 1944, introduced her three main series characters: Manhattan private investigator Mark East and a pair of New England spinsters, Miss Beulah and Miss Bessy. The trio allowed her to uniquely blend the hard and soft-boiled styles of detective fiction, while her witty writing ensured her books were hits. Death of a Doll is considered her best work. Lawrence died in Manhattan, New York, in 1976 at the age of 70.