Jeffrey Marks

Life and career

Marks was born in Georgetown, Ohio, the son of Barbara Cummins Marks and Gerald Ronald Marks. He has one sister, Lisa. He was raised in Cincinnati, and attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he received a B.S in Systems Analysis.

Marks is best known for the series of literary criticisms he has written on American mystery authors of the middle Twentieth Century. His first work, Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice; Queen of the Screwball Mystery, was nominated for every major mystery award including the Edgar, the Agatha, the Anthony and the Macavity

Marks' next work was Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s/1950s, which again was nominated for an Agatha.

Mark then wrote Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel, which is now in its fourth edition. He became the moderator of Murder Must Advertise, a website and email group that discusses the best ways to market genre fiction in a changing marketplace.

His next work, Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography, a biography and bibliography of the American author, won an Anthony Award in 2009 for Best Biographical/Critical work.

He has completed a biography of mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, the author who created Perry Mason among other characters and has published a monograph on the pulp fiction works of Gardner, entitled Pulp Icons. He is currently working on a biography of the collaborative cousins who wrote as Ellery Queen.

Marks is also a contributing editor to Mystery Scene Magazine and the director of development for Crippen & Landru.

Marks married in 1990; they divorced in 1993. He remarried in August, 2003. He lives in White Oak, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.