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writer, and creator of lawyer-detective Ephraim Tutt. Born in Boston, the son of Sarah M. (Cheney) and Charles Russell Train, attorney general of Mas- sachusetts for seventeen years, Train graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School and then was a lawyer and assistant district attorney. In 1897 he married Ethel Kissam; they had a son and three daughters. His first wife died in 1923. He mar- ried Helen C. Gerard in 1926; they had a son. Train sold his first story in 1904 and produced al most 300 stories and books thereafter. In his auto- biography, My Day in Court (1939), he wrote: "I enjoy the dubious distinction of being known among lawyers as a writer, and among writers as a lawyer." Members of both professions, he good-humoredly lamented, treated him with condescension. Although Train's best-known work is about Mr. Tutt, he also wrote some of the first books about true crime in America, nonmystery novels, science fic- tion, and mystery fiction not involving Tutt, notably his first book, McAllister and His Double (1905), a collection of short stories featuring "Fatty" Welch (alias Wilkins) and introducing the scientific detec- tive Monsieur Donaque; The Confessions of Artemus Quibble (1911), a series of connected episodes about a New York shyster lawyer; and Manhattan Murder (1936), a fast-paced novel about organized crime. (fron Steinbrunner & Penzler, Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, NY, McGraw Hill, 1976) |
