Margaret Yorke


Margaret Yorke, the pseudonym of Margaret Beda Nicholson , was an English crime fiction writer.

Life and work

Margaret Larminie was born in Compton, Surrey, near Godalming, 30 January 1924. She spent her childhood in Dublin, moving to England in 1937. During World War II she worked as a hospital librarian, then at eighteen she joined the WRNS as a driver.
She changed to the Yorke pen name to avoid readers' confusion with a similarly-named published family member. She published her first novel Summer Flight in 1957, and in Dead in the Morning invented an Oxford don sleuth, Patrick Grant, who shared her love of Shakespeare. Her most recent novels were A Case to Answer and Cause for Concern. Her five Patrick Grant books were reissued as ebooks in 2018. She was chairman of the Crime Writers Association in 1979–80.
She lived in Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire until her death. Yorke died at the age of 88 on 17 November 2012.

Awards

She was awarded the 1999 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, and the 1982 Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection for The Scent of Fear.

Patrick Grant novels