Hillary Waugh, king of the procedurals

Michael Carlson has written a wonderful, if somewhat belated obituary of Hillary Waugh, the detective novelist who died in December last year. Waugh (no relation) was one of the defining authors of the police-procedural novel, particularly renowned for his 1952 story, Last Seen Wearing, which is generally agreed to be the finest example of the genre. His main character, Frank Ford, was plodding and undistinguished, a welcome contrast to the plethora of womanising alcoholics that his contemporaries wrote about. He wrote more than fifty novels, many of which featured Frank Ford, and never resorted to the red herrings and cliffhangers that have turned the detective story into a series of potboilers.