Michael Arlen began his writing career in journalism but quickly abandoned that field to write short stories, novels, plays, and a screenplay. He enjoyed enormous popularity at times--The Green Hat (1924) in particular was hugely successful--and was compared favorably with such writers as Aldous Huxley and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was essentially a creator of nonrealistic romances written in an overtly artificial style reminiscent of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), well outside the regular canon of detective fiction, but some of his output can be advantageously considered in its light.

Michael Arlen was born Dikran Kouyoumdjian in Bulgaria to Armenian parents. He was the youngest of a family of four sons and one daughter. In 1901 his family immigrated to England, where he attended Malvern College. When his schooling was complete, his parents expected him to enter the family business and his teachers thought that he should go up to...