Name Dolores Hitchens Role Novelist | Movies Band of Outsiders | |
 | ||
Books Sleep with Slander, Sleep with strangers | ||
Julia Clara Catherine Maria Dolores Robins Norton Birk Olsen Hitchens (December 25, 1907 in San Antonio, Texas – August 1, 1973 in Orange County, California), better known as Dolores Hitchens, was an American mystery novelist who wrote prolifically from 1938 until her death. She also wrote as D. B. Olsen, a version of her first married name, and under the pseudonyms Dolan Birkley and Noel Burke.
Contents
Hitchens collaborated on five railroad mysteries—"police procedurals about a squad of railroad cops"—with her second husband, Bert Hitchens, a railroad detective. She also branched out into other genres including Western fiction. Many of her mystery novels centered on a spinster character named Rachel Murdock.
Hitchens wrote Fool's Gold, the 1958 novel adapted by Jean-Luc Godard for his film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, 1964). Her novel, The Watcher, was adapted for an episode of the TV series "Thriller" which aired November 1, 1960.
Biography
Dolores was born in Texas on Christmas Day in 1907. She was the daughter of W.H. Robbins and Myrtle Statham, who married in Caldwell County, Texas in 1901. In 1910, Dolores (as Julia C. Robbins) and her apparently widowed mother were living with Dolores's paternal grandfather in San Antonio.
Sometime over the next decade, Dolores's mother married a second time, to an unknown Norton, but she was divorced by the time mother and daughter showed up in the 1920 census for Kern County, California.
Myrtle married a third time in 1922, to Oscar Carl Birk, aka Arthur. The Birk family was living in Long Beach by 1930 and Dolores apparently assumed her stepfather's surname.
Dolores married in about 1934, to Beverley S. Olsen, a radio operator on a merchant vessel, and their 1940 household included the widowed Myrtle Birk.
It is not known whether Dolores divorced Olsen or was widowed, but she apparently married Hubert A. Hitchens by the early 1940s, as they had a child together in 1942. Dolores died in Orange County, California on August 1, 1973, and Hubert died in Riverside County in 1979.
As Dolores Hitchens
- Sleep with Strangers (Doubleday: The Crime Club, 1955); U.K. edition, London: Macdonald, 1956
- Sleep with Slander (Doubleday CC, 1960); UK: London: T.V. Boardman & Co., 1961, American Bloodhound Mystery no. 345
As D. B. Olsen
- Cat Saw Murder (Doubleday, 1939)
- Alarm of Black Cat (Doubleday, 1942)
- Catspaw for Murder (Doubleday, 1943); aka Cat's Claw
- The Cat Wears a Noose (Doubleday, 1944)
- Cats Don't Smile (Doubleday, 1945)
- Cats Don't Need Coffins (Doubleday, 1946)
- Cats Have Tall Shadows (Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1948)
- The Cat Wears a Mask (Doubleday, 1949)
- Death Wears Cat's Eyes (Doubleday, 1950)
- Cat and Capricorn (Doubleday, 1951)
- The Cat Walk (Doubleday, 1953)
- Death Walks on Cat Feet (Doubleday, 1956)
- Shroud for the Bride (Doubleday, 1945); aka Bring the Bride a Shroud
- Gallows for the Groom (Doubleday, 1947)
- Devious Design (Doubleday, 1948)
- Something About Midnight (Doubleday, 1950)
- Love Me in Death (Doubleday, 1951)
- Enrollment Cancelled (Doubleday, 1952); aka Dead Babes in the Wood
- The Clue in the Clay (New York: Phoenix Press, 1938) – her first book published under any name; also NY: Bartholomew House, 1946, A Bart House Mystery no. 35, ASIN B000HU0N64
- Death Cuts a Silhouette (Doubleday, 1939)