White, Ethel Lina (1876-1944)

A powerhouse of the genre, she published around 100 short stories and 17 novels, one of which was adapted into the acclaimed film “The Lady Vanishes.”This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Before Alfred Hitchcock made his name in Hollywood, he turned to the work of the British suspense novelist Ethel Lina White.White was a powerhouse of the genre in the 1930s, publishing more than 100 short stories and 17 novels, three of which were adapted into films, most notably Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). That movie, filmed in England, was named one of the top 100 films of the 20th century by the British Film Institute. It won Hitchcock the best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle — one of the few awards he would ever win for his directing — and it was the last film he made in England before he moved to Los Angeles.Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), about a woman’s search for another woman she meets on a train ride across Europe, was based on White’s book “The Wheel Spins.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, via LMPC/Getty Images“The Lady Vanishes” was based on White’s book “The Wheel Spins” (1936), a masterwork of horror and suspense that follows Iris Carr, an Englishwoman on holiday, who suffers a head injury before embarking on a train ride across Europe, where she engages in conversation with another Englishwoman, Miss Froy. When Miss Froy disappears, everyone on the train disavows any knowledge of the woman’s existence. “The Wheel Spins” cleverly puts the screws to poor Iris, teetering between sanity and madness as her continued investigations threaten to reveal an overarching conspiracy.By the time “The Wheel Spins” was published in 1936, White had already made her name in the mystery genre. “She took a style in its infancy and added so many threads of classical literature to it,” one scholar wrote.Collins Crime ClubWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More