Richard Scott Prather, Mystery Writer

This author was once one of my favorite Mystery writers. He also wrote under two other pseudonyms of Douglas Ring and David Knight. He wrote the wonderful Shell Scot Mysteries Series from 1950 through 1987. If you are unfamiliar with his work, he not only wrote a great mystery but interjected humor throughout his books. He said that life was full of bad stuff and he wanted people to be entertained at the same time as they were reading his mysteries.

In his life time he some 43 stories in the form short stories, a novelette, books and even a show for the Dragnet TV series. In addition, his character Shell Scott was put in a comic book in one of the late great Dashell Hammett stories about a secret agent.

Richard was born in Santa Ana California on September 9th 1921 and became interested in writing as a child but started out writing poetry. He said he always wanted to be a writer since he attended Grammar school and got interested in mysteries because he read a lot of Pulp Fiction. In 1942 he joined the Merchant Marine where he served until the war was over in 1945

In 1949 he and his wife Tina lived in a tiny apartment near March AFB when he approached her about quitting their jobs and moving to Laguna Beach to write full time. She agreed and he started to write his first book there called "The Maddern Caper" under the name of David Knight which was sold to Graphic Books. In Laguna Beach they lived near the ocean which he loved, until 1951 when he got the itch to move again. This time they took off for Mexico where they lived for a year, where they both got Montezuma's Revenge from drinking the water and finally decided to the US

His first novel published by Fawcett Gold Metal was "The Case of The Vanishing Beauty" in 1950. When his books hit the 30million dollar sales however he changed and signed a contract with Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books. They wanted to extend his contract another ten years and it made him angry, so he sued them to get out of the contractual rights they had in 1975. It took five year to settle the suit and during that time he quit writing for almost nine year and decided to grow 10 acres of organic avocados.

Eventually however, he wrote two more books. His final book was "Shellshock" was printed by Tor Books in 1987 before he quit writing for good.

Richard and Tina Prather were married for 58 year before she died in April of 2004. He seemed lost without her and he died in February of 2007.