Amber Dean (1902–1985)

Amber Dean Getzin was born in Depew, New York, on December 12, 1902, of Canadian parentage. In the 1930's, she moved to Rochester with her husband Norman "Dutch" Getzin (d. 1976). Between 1944 and 1973 she wrote seventeen mystery novels under the pen name Amber Dean. In writing her novels, Mrs. Getzin drew from incidents in her personal life, background, and regional locality, most of her books being set in upstate New York.

Throughout her approximately thirty-year career as a writer, Amber Dean gave many lectures on writing mysteries to clubs, organizations, and libraries. Another of her concerns was Operation Morale, a volunteer organization that sent care packages to men serving in Vietnam during the war. She wrote numerous letters on behalf of Operation Morale to corporations and prominent individuals asking for donations. She was also involved in garden clubs, particularly the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State. She took horticultural classes and eventually became a judge for flower shows.

In 1979, Amber Dean began writing her memoirs, to be called Ten Miles East of Buffalo. A couple of the chapters were published in a condensed form in Upstate magazine in 1981. She also revised There's A Man In My Cistern, an unpublished manuscript, re-naming it Mrs. Neoga Is Late Again. She died on June 3, 1985 after a short illness.


Bibliography

Dead Man's Float (1944)
Chanticleer's Muffled Crow (1945)
Call Me Pandora (1946)
Wrap It Up (1946)
Foggy Foggy Dew (1947)
No Traveler Returns (1948)
Snipe Hunt (1949)
Ticket to Buffalo (1951)
August Incident (1951)
Collector's Item (1953)
The Devil Threw Dice (1954)
Something For The Birds (1959)
Bullet Proof (1960)
Encounter With Evil (1961)
Deadly Contact (1963)
The Dower Chest (1970)
Be Home By Eleven (1973)