Mary Roberts Rinehart

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was an American writer regarded as an influential author of detective fiction. Born in Pittsburgh, she trained as a nurse before publishing her first novels in the early 20th century. She achieved international success from the 1910s onward. During the First World War, she worked as a war correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post and reported from the front in England. One of her best-known works is The Door, a story often associated with the later popular “the butler did it” motif. Rinehart was married to physician Stanley Marshall Rinehart and had three sons.