THE BEST-KNOWN pseudonym of the prolific mystery novelist and short-story writer Judson Philips (1903–1989) is Hugh Pentecost, taken from a great-uncle who was a noted criminal lawyer in New York at the turn of the last century. The author’s other pseudonym, Philip Owen, was also borrowed from a relative. Although Philips wrote thirty novels and more than a hundred stories under his own name, the Pentecost pseudonym became better known and many of his earlier stories were reprinted under that more familiar name.
Born in Massachusetts, the author’s family traveled extensively when he was young and he was educated in England before returning to get his AB degree from Columbia University in 1925. Selling his first story while still in school, he became a full-time writer for the rest of his life, even when suffering from emphysema and near blindness in later years. He was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, became its third president, and was honored with the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1973.
“The Day the Children Vanished” became part of newspaper headlines when a California school bus was hijacked in July 1976 and the FBI was alerted to the Pentecost short story. It became abundantly clear that the kidnappers had no knowledge of the story, but the publicity garnered with the appearance of life following art resulted in Pentecost expanding the plot into a full-length novel of the same title, rushed into print later in the same year of the crime.
“The Day the Children Vanished” was first published in This Week magazine in 1958.