Isabel Egenton Ostrander (1883–1924) was an American mystery writer of the early twentieth century who used her own name and the pseudonyms Robert Orr Chipperfield, David Fox, and Douglas Grant. Christopher B. Booth is falsely credited as a pseudonym of hers.
Early life
She was born in New York City to Thomas E Ostrander and Harriet Elizabeth Bradbrook. Her Ostrander pedigree goes back to seventeenth-century Kingston, New York.
First Blind Detective
In the discussions of which writer invented the blind detective, Ostrander is one of the candidates.
The first book publication of her Damon Gaunt is a 1915 novel At One-Thirty, but there might be a misplaced earlier short story: periodical publication of many mystery short story writers is often lost or partial. For example, blind detective Thornley Colton appeared in some short stories in People's Ideal Fiction Magazine in early 1913 that weren't collected in book form until 1915, while Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah reached the periodicals in 1913, but anthologization in 1914. In no case is bibliography complete for periodicals, and either might be the first, though Max Carrados was the first in book publication.
Agatha Christie parodies
In the 1920s, Ostrander was notable enough that Agatha Christie parodied Ostrander's work in Christie's Tommy and Tuppence short stories, anthologized in Partners in Crime. We find Tommy and Tuppence modeling their detective skills after Ostrander's characters, ex-Roundsman Timothy McCarty and his friend Dennis Riordan.
Personal life
Ostrander married songwriter Arthur J. Lamb in June 1907 and filed for divorce 11 months later.
