Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876—1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie, although her first mystery novel was published 12 years before Christie's first novel in 1920. Rinehart is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it" from her novel The Door, although the novel does not use the exact phrase. Rinehart is also considered to have invented the "Had-I-but-Known" school of mystery writing, with the publication of The Circular Staircase. Excerpt: "There was nothing to indicate anything unusual that Tuesday morning in the life of Wade Forsythe II, ex-lieutenant of Marines in the late if not the last war and now member of the bar. There was no poetry in his soul, no particular love in his heart. There was, on the contrary, a look of concentrated hatred in his good-looking face as he sat down at his desk and glared at the red-bound book which was the Revenue Act of 1951. His secretary, Miss Potter, accustomed to the Ides of March, was unperturbed." Contents: The Frightened Wife If Only It Were Yesterday The Scandal Murder and the South Wind The Burned Chair
