James Hay

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1903, he worked briefly for the Washington Post and then joined the Washington Times, where political reporting led to his role as a White House reporter. He was also a founder and charter member of the National Press Club, and was known to be friendly with Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

For several years he wrote freelance stories and magazine pieces. After a serious health collapse in 1917, he moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where he kept writing and became an associate editor of the Asheville Citizen. Much of his fiction grew out of the worlds he knew best: newspapers, politics, and public intrigue.

Most of his ten books were detective novels. Among the best known are The Winning Clue (1919), The Bellamy Case (1925), and The Hidden Woman (1929), with several of these mysteries set in Asheville and others in Washington. He died on May 7, 1936.