Charles J. (Charles Judson) Dutton

Born in 1888, Charles Judson Dutton was an American mystery writer whose background was broader than most crime novelists'. Sources describe him as educated at Brown University, Albany Law School, and Defiance Theological Seminary, and as someone who also worked as a clergyman and newspaper columnist before and alongside his fiction writing.

He wrote roughly fifteen mystery novels between the 1920s and 1930s. A number of them featured the detective John Bartley, while later books centered on Professor Harley Manners, a criminal psychologist. Titles associated with him include The Underwood Mystery, Out of the Darkness, Murder in a Library, Poison Unknown, and Black Fog.

That mix of professions may help explain the tone of his work: part classic detective story, part character study, and often interested in the mind as much as the crime. Though he is not as widely known today as some Golden Age contemporaries, his novels still appeal to readers who enjoy vintage mysteries with recurring investigators and an old-fashioned, bookish atmosphere.