Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay

Lassiter Wren (pseudonym of John T. Colter), with co-author Randle McKay, launched the concept of the “puzzle book”—in which the reader becomes the detective—into a Golden Age phenomenon with The Baffle Book in 1928. The Baffle Book became instantly popular and it was soon followed by The Second Baffle Book (1929) and The Third Baffle Book (1930). Little else is known about John T. Colter.

Randle McKay (pseudonym of Richard Rowan), with co-author Lassiter Wren, launched the concept of the “puzzle book”—in which the reader becomes the detective—into a Golden Age phenomenon with The Baffle Book in 1928. The Baffle Book became instantly popular and it was soon followed by The Second Baffle Book (1929) and The Third Baffle Book (1930). Richard Rowan was educated at Brown and Columbia and served in the US Army Chemical Warfare Service during World War I. Apart from the Baffle books, he also published a number of nonfiction books about the history of espionage under his own name.