Helen Reilly was born in New York City in 1891. Her father was John Michael Kieran, the president of Hunter College, and her brother, John Kieran, produced the famous Information Please series, a radio program that showcased his encyclopedic learning. Helen married Paul Reilly, an artist and cartoonist, in 1914 before she completed her degree from Hunter. They were an unusual couple for the time, Helen was the main breadwinner for the family. The couple had four daughters, two of whom, Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, followed in their mother’s footsteps as mystery writers. When Helen was asked about the effect of her success on her husband she replied, "I make the living, but he makes living worthwhile."
At the urging of her lifelong friend, William McFee, an eminent author, Reilly began writing detective stories. Almost all of her stories are police procedurals that feature Inspector Christopher McKee and follow the formula of a detailed presentation of a homicide investigation, told from the point of view of the police. It is easy to understand Reilly’s reason for writing this way—her stories were major successes. She wrote thirty-three mysteries in her thirty-year career, as well as three others under the pen name Kieran Abbey. The leading magazines of the time that published popular fiction, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, often featured her work. She served as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1953.
She lived in Connecticut for a number of years; this state is the setting of Certain Sleep (1961). After her husband died in 1944, she returned to New York. Although she eventually moved from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to live with her daughter Ursula Curtiss and Ursula’s family, she always considered herself a native New Yorker. She died on January 11, 1962, continuing to write almost to the end of her life.
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