Jack Iams (November 15, 1910 – January 27, 1990)

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Jack Iams (Samuel Harvey Iams, Jr.), Class of 1932 at Princeton University, was a noted mystery writer, journalist, a novelist and an editor in the first part of the twentieth century. He died of a stroke on January 27, 1990. At the time of his death, he and his wife, Joan Walker Wenning Iams, were en route to New York City from London. Mr. Iams, whose journalistic career spanned more than half a century, was 79 years old.

At various times, he was a foreign correspondent, a writer for Newsweek, and an author of comic and mystery novels.

Samuel Harvey Iams Jr. was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on Nov. 15, 1910. After graduating from St. Paul's School and Princeton University in 1932, he became a reporter for The London Daily Mail. He then wrote for other newspapers - including The Daily News - and Newsweek. He became a television critic for The New York Herald Tribune and was an editor of Atlas magazine, which is now known as World Press Review.

Adopting the pseudonym Jack Iams, he proceeded to publish his own books. Iams is best known for his mysteries, including Death Draws the Line, and his crime novels featuring the character Rocky Rockwell.

Among his books, seven mystery novels, The Body Missed the Boat (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1947), Girl Meets Body (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1947), Prematurely Gay (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1948), Death Draws the Line (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1949), Do Not Murder Before Christmas (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1949), A Shot of Murder (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1950), What Rhymes with Murder? (NY: William Morrow and Co., 1950).

He wrote 13 books in total, including The Countess to Boot and Prophet by Experience. A review in The New York Times Book Review said his 1939 novel, Table for Four, was ''as brilliantly witty as the best of the British brand,'' and favorably compared it to Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies.

At Princeton, he was active in theatricals at the Triangle Club, along with James Stewart, Joshua Logan and Jose Ferrer. He was a member of the Players.

At the beginning of the ‘70, he retired to Opio in the South of France, where he continued to write. At the moment of his death, having sold their house, he and his wife were returning to the United States.

He had two sons and a daughter by his first marriage. His son David was the society reporter of The Philadelphia Inquirer; John was a correspondent in Moscow for The Associated Press, and Alice Kittredge lived in Panama. He had also four grandchildren.

First Book - Nowhere with Music (1938)

Last Book - A shot of murder (1953)

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/29/obituaries/jack-iams-novelist-editor-of-magazine-and-tv-critic-79.html