CASSIDAY, Bruce (Bingham) 1920-2005

(Carson Bingham, Burt Carrick, Nick Carter, Max Day, Mary Anne Drew, Robert Faraday, C. K. Fong, Lester Heath, Annie Laurie McAllister, Annie Laurie McMurdie, Con Steffanson, Michael Stratford)

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born January 25, 1920, in Los Angeles, CA; died of Parkinson's disease January 12, 2005, in Stamford, CT. Author. Cassiday was a prolific author of genre fiction who also edited several successful surveys of genre literature. He graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles with a B.A. just as the United States was entering World War II. Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces, he became a staff sergeant, served in North Africa and Italy, and was awarded battle stars for his service. Upon returning home he was hired as an editor for Popular Publications, a publisher of pulp fiction. Despite the fact that literary critics disparaged the pulps as low-brow fiction, Cassiday found it to be a rich and lucrative area. He remained at Popular Publications until 1949, then worked for Farrell Publications for three years. In 1954, he became fiction editor for Argosy magazine, one of the most successful genre publications in the country. It was during his time there that he began writing and publishing his own novels, beginning with 1957's While Murder Waits. Cassiday went on to publish dozens of genre books, often pseudonymously, and continued to have a successful writing career into the early 1990s. After Argosy closed its doors in 1973, he was hired to be an account executive at the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. From 1980 until 1990 he was general editor of the series "Recognitions: Mystery Writers" for Frederick Ungar Publishing. The prolific Cassiday was not limited to writing mysteries and other genre fiction, however, publishing a number of nonfiction titles and biographies. Many of his books were do-it-yourself titles, often dealing with his interest in construction and architecture. Among these are Fix It Yourself! (1970) and The Carpenter's Bible (1981). His biographies include Betty Ford: Woman of Courage (1978) and The World of Jay Leno: His Life and Humor (1992), the latter written with Bill Adler. Furthermore, Cassiday put his expertise in fiction to work as editor of such well-received surveys as Roots of Detection: The Art of Deduction before Sherlock Holmes (1983) and Modern Mystery, Fantasy, and Science Fiction Writers (1993). Always keeping up with the times, his final mystery novel, written with Adler, was Murder on the Internet (1999).

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PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), February 11, 2005, p. 43.