Lillian de la Torre was an American novelist and a prolific writer of historical mysteries. Her name is a pseudonym for Lillian de la Torre Bueno McCue.

Born in Manhattan in 1902, Miss de la Torre received Master's degrees from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 and Harvard. Her first novel was 'Elizabeth Is Missing, or Truth Triumphant', published by Knopf in 1945. Her most popular works were in a series of stories she wrote about Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, under the title 'Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector'. She also wrote numerous books, short stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...

, reviews for The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

, poetry and plays. She was a President of the Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....

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She died in 1993 at the age of 91. She was predeceased by her husband George McCue and was survived by a number of children.

Source: New York Times, September 19, 1993. Obituary by Bruce Lambert.