WRITER

Phyllis A. Whitney

1903 - 2008

Phyllis A. Whitney

Phyllis Ayame Whitney (September 9, 1903 – February 8, 2008) was an American mystery writer of more than 70 novels. Born in Yokohama, Japan to American parents in 1903, she spent her early years in Asia. After the death of her parents she moved to Chicago where she lived with her aunt. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Phyllis A. Whitney has received more than 101,832 page views. Her biography is available in 16 different languages on Wikipedia. Phyllis A. Whitney is the 6,403rd most popular writer (down from 5,860th in 2019), the 1,778th most popular biography from Japan (down from 1,638th in 2019) and the 115th most popular Japanese Writer.

Memorability Metrics

100k
Page Views (PV)
41.28
Historical Popularity Index (HPI)
16
Languages Editions (L)
3.13
Effective Languages (L*)
2.89
Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Hunter's Green

Fiction, Fiction in English, Fiction, espionage

*"The nightmare was one from which I could not waken. I was caught upon a chessboard, a helpless pawn in a game of life and death, and the green rook was hunting me. That tall rook of green-black yew who had it in his power to destroy the king and end the game..."* When Eve North returns to Athmore after three years' separation from her husband Justin, she finds the great estate-and Justin himself-vastly changed. Eve too has changed. She knows now the mistakes she made in her marriage in the past, and she now dares to win back the love of her own husband. Like another Eve, she wanders into the gardens of Athmore, unsuspecting. Yet she has reason to fear. Justin's brother Marc had once before placed her in a compromising position in that place of secrets-the green velvet room. Justin had believed Marc and never forgiven her. Now Marc waits for her at Athmore. Then, too, she has been warned that Justin has made up his mind at last to divorce her in order to marry Alicia Daven-the cool, serene Alicia whose quiet assurance comes from generations at Grovesend, and who has always taunted the American Eve with her tempting of Justin. Old Daniel-just before he is sent to his death-tries to warn Eve. It is he who carved from the green-black yew a topiary garden, one of the marvels of Athmore. The dark trees are clipped into the shape of chessmen, at a game forever in play. The black rook stands poised in readiness, like a hunter ready for the kill, challenging the white king. Daniel cries to Eve, "It's the black rook's play!"-but he dies before Eve can learn his fateful meaning. Eve finds herself entrapped on a chessboard of evil, unsure of her next move, yet aware that the black rook will move again-this time to destroy her. *From the jacket.*

1696

Columbella

Fiction in English, Family life, Fiction

**From the jacket** *That was a night of gold and red, with torches flaming on the hilltop and the lights of Charlotte Amalie fanning out around the harbor below. A night of water lily and sweet-smelling cereus. The night of the shell…* Jessica Abbott, fleeing her own past, finds herself the center of a whirlpool of conflict at Hampden House, high on its cliff in the Virgin Islands. She is confronted by Catherine Drew, a woman whose sole purpose is to torment and destroy. Catherine is the wife of a vital, driven man, Kingdon Drew-toward whom Jessica is irresistible drawn. Jessica must defy the beautiful, self-indulgent Catherine, who likes to affect the name of a shell - Columbella. She must fight for the very future of another woman's child. Above all, she must find the strength to help the man she loves escape the trap Catherine has set for him. Yet each day Catherine seems to mock her in a new way - and win. Until the night of the shell… Always, the brilliant island sun shines over Hampden House in St. Thomas and over Caprice, the plantation in St. Croix that is crumbling to eerie ruin, guarded by its unicorns. Always the threat of a hurricane looms over this exotic setting, where the past still affects the present.

1966

Black Amber

Fiction in English, Large type books, Fiction, thrillers, suspense

**From the jacket** In an ancient land of Mosques and Minarets, the secret behind her sister's death is hidden. When Anabel Radburn placed a desperate overseas phonecall to her sister Tracy saying she was in great danger, Tracy chalked it up to Anabel's dramatic flair. Until the next day when Anabel's body is pulled from the Bosporus in Istanbul. Racked with guilt for not responding immediately, Tracy travels to Turkey where she keeps her idenity secret while trying to piece together the broken threads of Anabel's life. Despite what Anabel's husband says, Tracy is convinced that her sister did not commit suicide. As she searches for clues in Anabel's waterfront vills. Tracy finds mystery and danger around every corner. Alone in a far-off country, Tracy must act quickly if she wants to live long enough to avenge Anabel's death.

1964

Listen for the Whisperer

Fiction, Motion picture actors and actresses, Mothers and daughters

**From the jacket** Leigh's father was a famed novelist and her mother, a great actress of Hollywood's golden age. But they never married. Leigh grew up without knowing her real mother-viewing the distant, romantic figure with bitterness and resentment. Her father's death, however, brought them together, as Leigh honored his deathbed request to travel to Bergen, Norway, and search out Laura Worth, the woman who had known his deepest love. Laura, too, was haunted by the past-by the unsolved murder that had occurred on the set of her last movie, The Whisperer, where she had found the director bludgeoned to death one night. Although cleared of all guilt, she had mysteriously left the film colony forever. When Leigh arrived in Bergen, she found Laura's life still darkened by the shadow of the crime. As a series of "accidents" made clear, someone was trying to destroy Laura-or drive her to self-destruction. At night in the Kalfaret house, voices would whisper "Listen... Listen," just as they had in her ill-fated final film. Because she is Laura's daughter, Leigh soon finds herself a target as well, and only a climactic, terror-filled confrontation brings the long-sought answers.

1971

Rainbow in the Mist

Murder, Psychics, Fiction

**From the jacket** Christy Loren has come to fear her gift of clairvoyance, an unwanted legacy from her mother, a famous psychic. Without warning, visions envelop her, visions that have guided the police, too late, to the bodies of murder victims. To escape these horrors, Christy flees her home in Long Island to seek peace and safety in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and the reassuring presence of her down-to-earth aunt. But she finds that even more threatening mysteries await her in those mountains, mysteries that surround a writer's recent death and the disappearance of the unearthly, enigmatic Deirdre. Christy senses secrets locked in the heart of Deirdre's tormented husband-with whom she fears she is becoming too emotionally involved-and haunting Deirdre's troubled son. Caught in this ominous web, Christy must come to terms with her unwanted psychic powers. As she is drawn into the search for Deirdre, she sees with increasing clarity that the mysteries have a connection to a blood-chilling dream that haunts her. In trying to escape her fate, she has unwittingly embraced it. Now, to uncover the truth, Christy must confront her gift of precognition and her dream. The shocking truth will bring her face-to-face with real and terrifying danger.

1988

Woman without a past

Women, Fiction, Mystery fiction

In her thirty-fifth novel of psychological suspense, Phyllis A. Whitney spins a spellbinding tale of a young woman's quest to uncover her true identity. Successful young mystery novelist Molly Hunt, raised by adoptive parents on Long Island, is stunned when a chance encounter leads to a startling revelation. She is apparently the daughter of the aristocratic Mountfort family of Charleston, South Carolina, kidnapped as an infant from their ancestral home - and has an identical twin sister. Travelling to Charleston, Molly meets her delicately lovely long-lost twin; her mother's stern cousin, now the family patriarch, doubtful of Molly's identity and suspicious of her motives; and his tiny, enigmatic wife, a psychic who channels the spirit of a man who died mysteriously on the Mountfort estate a generation before. As Molly searches for the truth of her own origins, she comes to realize that the secrets of her troubled family's past have a strange and powerful hold on the present. Her reappearance in the lives of the Mountfort clan sets in motion events that threaten the family's very existence - as well as her own.

1750