Guest Post, Mysteries

Guest Post: Randal Brandt

We are thrilled to be hosting a special guest today: Randal Brandt is Head of Cataloging and Curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at The Bancroft Library (University of California, Berkeley). Randal has also been announced as the Fan Guest of Honor at Left Coast Crime in 2026 (where our own Leslie Karst will be the Toastmaster). Please join us in giving Randal a very warm welcome!

Bringing Dead California Mystery Writers Back to Life

As a member of the 2025 Bay Area Book Festival Literary Advisory Committee, I was recently in a large Zoom meeting where we were asked what superpower we had that could assist in developing programs. Some people were poets; others were experts in children’s literature; and some had connections to agents and book publishers. As I scrambled to figure out what I, as a librarian, could bring to the table, I finally settled on my work researching and writing about forgotten authors; at least it was an atypical skill. So, when my turn came around, I said that my superpower was bringing dead California mystery writers back to life.

Unfortunately, there were no panel slots available for dead authors.

But I’m still claiming it as my superpower.

Recently, I’ve been involved with three re-issues of long out-of-print mysteries by women California authors: The Birthday Murder (1945) by Lange Lewis, issued by Penzler Publishers in the American Mystery Classics series in 2023; Nancy Barr Mavity’s The Tule Marsh Murder (1929), also in the American Mystery Classics series, in 2024; and, Make With the Brains, Pierre (1946) by Dana Wilson published by Black Gat Books/Stark House Press in June 2025.

Lange Lewis (1915-2003) was born Jane de Lange Lewis in Oakland, California. After her father’s death, Jane and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she attended Los Angeles High School and the University of Southern California. From 1942 to 1952, she published six mystery novels, five of which featured Los Angeles homicide inspector Lt. Richard Tuck. In The Birthday Murder, Tuck investigates the poisoning murder of a Hollywood movie director who was just about to start production on an adaptation of his wife’s best-selling novel about a murderess… who killed her husband by poison!

Nancy Barr Mavity (1890-1959), née Nann Clark Barr, was born in Bridgeport, Illinois. After earning a PhD from Cornell University, she took a job teaching philosophy at Connecticut College. Her career in academia was short-lived, however, when she quit in protest over lesser-qualified male colleagues being promoted above her. In 1919, Nancy and her husband moved to Oakland, California, and she took a job as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune (a job she would hold until her death). Between 1929 and 1933, she published seven mystery novels, six featuring intrepid ace newspaper reporter James Aloysius “Peter” Piper. In his initial outing in The Tule Marsh Murder, Peter is drawn into the mystery surrounding the discovery of a woman’s badly burned body in the marsh near El Cerrito, California.

Dana Wilson (1922-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York as Dorothy Natoli. She attended drama school in New York; in 1941, she married fellow acting student Lewis Wilson and they moved to Los Angeles. While her husband was away fighting in World War II, Dana wrote her one and only crime novel, Make With the Brains, Pierre, a quirky tale of a French expat trying, but mostly failing, to make a living as a film cutter in Hollywood. Desperate for money, Pierre gets involved in a blackmail scheme that, naturally, ends badly. Dana and Lewis divorced after the war. In 1959, she married film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and played a significant role (albeit always behind the scenes) in creating and shaping one of the most successful film franchises in history. (In case you don’t already know, here’s a hint: “The name is Bond… James Bond.”)

I don’t know if literary resurrection is a real superpower or not. But helping to make these books available to new readers for the first time in decades, and researching the incredible lives of these forgotten authors, is deeply gratifying and, frankly, a ton of fun.

Randal Brandt is a librarian at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as Head of Cataloging and as Curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection.

He is a member of the American Library Association’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section and the Northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

21 thoughts on “Guest Post: Randal Brandt”

  1. Hi Randal –

    It’s always fun to discover a writer you haven’t heard of before, especially if they’ve good and even better if they have a series. My only experience with California was a week in San Francisco a decade or more ado, where I made it a point to walk in the footsteps of Sam Spade. My latest Natalie McMasters Mystery, Cult!, which I’ll release next month in time for Killer Nashville, is partly set in L.A. where I’ve never set foot, so I hope Ive nailed the L.A. experience. I’ve read the great L.A. writers like Chandler, Connolly and Kellerman for inspiration.

    Tom Burns

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  2. Sounds like an awesome super power to me! Bringing relatively unknown authors and their works to new audiences is amazing! Thank you. This was most interesting.

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  3. Thank you so much for visiting us today, Randal and for introducing these authors! Love your superpower. 🙂

    The bios are all very intriguing (in addition to the books). When I was teaching the film noir class, I learned about Dana Wilson, who was married to the first Batman actor, I think? That book title is so impossible to ignore, too. She sounds like a super interesting person!

    Speaking of which, I should have mentioned in the introduction that you are a film noir expert too! You have many superpowers…

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  5. Thanks for sharing your literary superpower with us! (I definitely think it counts.) BTW, “Unfortunately, there were no panel slots available for dead authors” is my favorite sentence I’ll read all day. See you in SF and here’s to many more resurrections!

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  6. Thanks so much for this marvelous blog post, Randal. I’d never heard of any of those women or books before–and now they’re all on my TBR list. (Wondering about that one title, “Make with the Brains, Pierre”–which sounds like a mis-translation from the French, lol–and whether it plays a part in the plot.)

    So looking forward to being toastmaster at Left Coast Crime with you as a guest in San Francisco!

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  8. Thanks so much visiting Chicks today, Randal. We’re looking forward to meeting a true superhero in San Fran! I just looked up Dana Wilson’s title–love it, and can’t wait to read.

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  10. I haven’t heard of these authors before, so thanks for bringing them to my attention. It’s always great to see forgotten gems getting a new life.

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  12. Randal, thank you so much for being our guest today! You’re definitely a superhero with great powers! I love how you resurrected and highlighted a few authors today. Thank you also for being a fabulous supporter or living authors! P.S. See you at the next LCC!

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