Here's a weird one

[Pulpmeister]

In my tireless scrounging for short stories from newspapers and the like, for the L+70 Past Masters series, I occasionally turn up something that is very odd indeed.

Such as my latest discovery, a tough murder story set in the outback of Western Australia in (by the context) the interwar years, attributed to... wait for it ... E M Delafield.

It turned up in a Hobart Weekly called The Voice, 29 March 1952.

Now it's plainly not by E M Delafield, but by someone who knows the country out beyond Kalgoorlie where, it is very safe to say, E M Delafield never went. I was born in Kalgoorlie, and the countryside out there is known to me, and the story's got it all spot on.

It was published in 1952 so even if it's truly anonymous, it's still in copyright in L+70. I've parked it away under "Curiosities", like a previous discovery of a British crime short story as by "James Hilton", quite unlike his style and not known to the Hilton experts.

[gmw]

An outback murder mystery published in the 1950s makes me think of Arthur Upfield. I know he lived in WA for a while, and worked on No1 Rabbit Proof Fence (so he got out that way - 1929?).

The introduction to Up and Down Australia says Upfield published some 250 short stories, most between 1931 and 1940 (of which I've read 0). How such a story would end up in Hobart published under E M Delafield I do not know, but Upfield did get around.

Of course I imagine you have already considered (and probably discarded) this possibility, he just struck me as the most obvious candidate to fit the details.

[Little.Egret]

Copyright maverns may comment, but if it was published as by E M Delafield then the 50 year term applies and it's out of copyright now. Otherwise if there is actual evidence of a different author.

[Pulpmeister]

There is absolutely no possibility that it was written by E M Delafield, author of "Dairy of a Provincial Lady" and so on, all of a British, domestic drama nature. It doesn't seem like Upfield to me, but it could be Gavin Casey, died 1964, an author from Kalgoorlie who wrote fiction and non-fiction (he wrote, for instance, the motor racing novel "Checkpoint", made into a movie; many others.)

I sometimes wonder how these errors occur. 1952 was still the era of hot metal and linotype, and hand-setting pages in "formes" ...

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

[...] It doesn't seem like Upfield to me, but it could be Gavin Casey, died 1964, an author from Kalgoorlie who wrote fiction and non-fiction (he wrote, for instance, the motor racing novel "Checkpoint", made into a movie; many others.)

I sometimes wonder how these errors occur. 1952 was still the era of hot metal and linotype, and hand-setting pages in "formes" ...

I've heard of Gavin Casey but I don't think I've ever read any of his stories.

Everyone makes mistakes. Something misheard, mixed up or whatever. Or it could have been a job given to the work-experience kid.