George Baxt

George Baxt (born June 11, 1923 in New York City , † June 28, 2003 ) was an American crime writer.

George Baxt was first a writer for the stage, for film and for television. The first story he wrote was published as early as 1932. In the 1950s he was in Great Britain and wrote scripts for horror films.

But Baxt also wrote detective novels and with his detective novel production decisively promoted two currents of modern crime literature.

In 1966 his first crime novel was published ("A Queer Kind of Death"; published in German under the title: "Pharoah Love and the Bathtub of Death"). With this novel, Baxt founded the crime school with a gay serial hero. That's exactly what Mr. Love is, the first openly gay detective in crime fiction. (The novel is mentioned regularly - even on the Internet - but it does not add that it was actually the first of its kind in crime fiction.) Joseph Hansen is usually named as the founder of this school of crime literature , which is correct in that Hansen is a whole Series about his hero, David Brandstetter, and the portrayal was more realistic than the one Baxt chose. Regardless of the success and quality of the books, one thing can be said: George Baxt was the first author to venture into this terrain. (As a reminder: when the riot broke out in Christopher Street in 1969 , which is remembered today in almost all countries with the "CSD", homosexual activity was exempt from punishment in exactly one state in the USA, but still punishable in all other 49 states .)

With a second series, which began in 1984, Baxt broadened the broad stream of historical crime novels that have been written in bulk for around 30 years and cover almost all epochs of world history.

Detective novels that are not set in the present but in times past were occasionally published earlier. Agatha Christie moved the plot of her novel " Avenging Spirits " (1944) to ancient Egypt. One of the oldest known crime stories also belongs to it: "The Miss von Scuderi" by ETA Hoffmann (1820); Hoffmann settled the event in his novella in King Louis XIV's Paris. But it wasn't until around 30 years ago that the historical detective novel really began to blossom, to which the global success of Umberto Eco's “The Name of the Rose” made a decisive contribution. Much is described e.g. B. the Middle Ages (such as the novels about "Brother Cadfael" by Ellis Peters ) or the London of Queen Victoria (such as the novels about "Inspector Pitt" by Anne Perry ). In addition to historical detective novels, a subspecies developed that is characterized by the fact that the authors not only relocate the events to the past, but also allow people from the past to appear in their novels, be they people who are known from history lessons (as special The son of Queen Victoria, who later became King Edward VII, turned out to be popular, be it people borrowed from other books (especially popular here - of course! - Mr. Sherlock Holmes ).

George Baxt also described this subspecies of the historical detective novel, in which not only the plot is relocated to the past, but also - more or less prominent - people intervene in the action. The reader does not know his “celebrities” from history lessons, but (with one exception) from films. Greta Garbo , Marlene Dietrich or Mae West , for example , but also Alfred Hitchcock, work as detectives . The actress Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), not so well known in Germany, faces Senator McCarthy around 1952 in the “Tallulah Bankhead murder case” (originally published in 1987) .

In this respect, George Baxt occupies a special position among the authors of the historical crime novel (at most comparable to Samuel M. Steward). If one takes his life data and his professional career as a basis, it can be assumed that he - perhaps not all, but most of the people he immortalized in a detective novel - might have known personally.

Web links

• Literature by and about George Baxt in the catalog of the German National Library
• George Baxter in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)