Enid Schantz and her husband, Tom, tried to revive the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” and made friends all over the country.
Enid Schantz, who owned the Rue Morgue Press with her husband, died at her Lyons home of pancreatic cancer Aug. 10. She was 72.
They described their company as “reprinting what we like to call mysteries for little old ladies of all ages and sexes.”
“We looked around and asked the questions of who reads the most, who has the time and the money to buy books,” Tom Schantz said. They said their market was older people who liked many of the mysteries no longer in print.
In 1970, they started a book mail-order business in Freeville, N.Y., selling mysteries. They realized there was a market for books published from 1913 to 1952, which they called the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction.”
They began selling only mysteries, in which “neither of us was widely read,” Enid Schantz wrote.
But that changed, and they began searching for used books, sometimes returning from buying trips “with our Volvo station wagon crammed,” she wrote.
They moved in 1973 to Boulder, where they first operated out of their home and, eventually, on Pearl Street, where their shop remained until they sold it in 2000.
They retained the Rue Morgue name and continued publishing reprints of classic mysteries.
Many of Schantz’s customers she never met except over the phone.
Susan Petersen of Garland, Texas, who bought about 100 books each year, said: “Enid was enthusiastic, full of life and loved what she did. She cared about the people she dealt with.”
Michele Radecki of Longwood, Fla., said: “I never met Enid, but she was a lovely person. We got to be friends over the phone.”
Radecki bought more than a dozen books each year.
“Only about 5 percent of our orders are over the Internet,” Tom Schantz said. “Most are snail mail.”
Enid Schantz won the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her dedication to the mystery-book world. “It is a very prestigious award,” said Mario Acevedo, president of the Rocky Mountain chapter.
Enid Cheavens was born Nov. 6, 1938, in Lima, Peru, where her father worked as a mining engineer.
The family moved back to the United States when she was a child. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and got another from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
She married Tom Schantz on Aug. 8, 1969. In addition to him, she is survived by a daughter, Sarah Schantz of Boulder; a granddaughter; a stepgranddaughter; and her sister, Sallie Verrett of Grinnell, Iowa.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
Other Deaths
Dolores Hope, 102, the sultry-voiced songstress who was married to Bob Hope for 69 years and sang on his shows for U.S. troops and on his television specials, died Monday, a family spokesman said.
Bob Hope died at age 100 on July 27, 2003.
In 1933, when Bob Hope was appearing in his first Broadway show, “Roberta,” a friend persuaded him to visit the Vogue Club to “hear a pretty girl sing.” She was Dolores Reade, whose singing of “It’s Only a Paper Moon” entranced the young comedian.
Hope returned every night and soon he was escorting her to her hotel after her shows. They married Feb. 19, 1934, and she quit nightclubs to join his vaudeville act.
When they moved to Hollywood in 1938 for the beginning of his film career, Dolores stayed home and devoted her time to raising the four children the Hopes adopted: Linda, Anthony, Kelly and Nora. She continued singing at parties, and in the 1940s she began accompanying Hope on his Christmas trips to entertain U.S. troops.
Tom Wilson Sr., the creator of the hard-luck comic strip character Ziggy, died Friday of pneumonia, his family said Monday. He was 80.
Wilson was an artist at the American Greetings card company in Cleveland for more than 35 years and first published Ziggy in a 1969 cartoon collection, “When You’re Not Around.” Ziggy was launched in 15 newspapers in 1971 and now appears in more than 500 daily and Sunday newspapers. It also has appeared in books, calendars and greeting cards.
The Associated Press
