Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson
Cover of Genii (2001)
Born	August 15, 1906 Elyria, Ohio
Died	March 02, 1971 (age 64)
Categories	Books by Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson (1906-1971) was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician.

His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a principal character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."

In the late 1950's, Rawson organized the informal Witchdoctors Club in New York City as a successor to Bruce Elliott's Friday Night Sodality meetings.

From Clayton Rawson's son, Clayton Rawson, Jr.:

Every summer from the late 1950's into the mid 1960's, Clayton Rawson and his wife Kate invited the Witchdoctors Club and others to their home in Mamaroneck, New York for a summer picnic. Members performed an evening of magic for the Rawson's neighbors on the stage he had built in the backyard. It had curtains by Mother and spotlights in the trees... In additional to the regular Witchdoctors, others performers included: Milbourne Christopher, Harry Blackstone, Jr., Dai Vernon, the Amazing Randi, Harry Lorayne... I wish I had photos of those shows but i was too busy assisting back stage. Merlini performed many illusions at those shows notably Pepper's Ghost and the Levitation. I was featured in the former, my sisters alternated in the latter.

For many years, the Rawson backyard was also the site of the annual Mystery Writers of America picnic. Clayton Rawson was a founder of the MWA and the organization's first treasurer. He also coined the MWA's slogan: "Crime doesn't pay... enough".

Bibliography

Magic related books

• Scarne on Dice (1945) (with John Scarne)
• Pet Secrets (1951) (with Albert Baker)
• How to Entertain Children with Magic You Can Do (1962) (as The Great Merlini)
• The Golden Book of Magic: Amazing Tricks for Young Magicians (1964) (as The Great Merlini)

Mystery novels

• Death from a Top Hat (1938)
• The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939)
• The Headless Lady (1940)
• No Coffin for the Corpse (1942)

Collections of short stories

• Death Out of Thin Air (1941) (as Stuart Towne)
• Death from Nowhere (1943) (as Stuart Towne)
• Pictures Don't Lie (1950)
• The Great Merlini (1979)

References

This page incorporated content from Clayton Rawson, a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• Genii 2001 May (cover)
• http://itricks.com/news/2013/04/the-men-who-brought-death-to-magic/