Margaret Scherf

Margaret Scherf, born in Fairmont, West Virginia, was an American author of detective novels, editor and politician. The daughter of a college professor, she was raised in the states of New Jersey and Wyoming, before her family settled in Cascade, Montana. In 1928, she ended her studies at Antioch College in Ohio to work as a secretary with a publisher in New York. The following year, she left this job and worked part-time as a secretary for a magazine and, the rest of the time, as an editor for the Wise Book Company.

During World War II, she served as Secretary of the Navy in Brooklyn. At the same time, she decided to start writing. Her first detective novel, The Corpse Grows a Beard, was published to success in 1940. After the war, she became a full-time writer and returned to Montana. She married the owner of a cherry orchard, then bought and managed an antiques store, while continuing to publish. Her passion for politics led her to run as a Democratic representative and she was elected to the Montana legislature.

During her literary career, she published whodunits known for their mischievous and humorous, even burlesque, side. She also wrote several novels of children's and youth literature, including a volume in the Nancy Drew series, The Secret of the Wooden Lady (1950), under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.

Source: Wikipedia