Arthur Gask

Arthur Cecil Gask (10 July 1869 – 25 June 1951) was an English dentist and novelist. He is one of the earliest authors of Australian-based crime fiction.

Early life Gask was born on 10 July 1869 at St Marylebone, London, fourth of five children of Charles Gask, merchant, and his wife Fanny, née Edis.

Gask, accompanied by his second wife, their two sons, and by a daughter of his first marriage, emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia in 1920, where he set up practice as a dentist. He was among the first in the city to carry out extractions with gas.

Over a period of thirty years Gask wrote over thirty books as well as contributing short stories to The Mail in Adelaide. Most of his novels described the activities of a Sydney detective, Gilbert Larose, in solving crimes. Gask's work was translated into several European languages, serialised in newspapers and broadcast on radio. He also wrote short stories.

H. G. Wells, an admirer of Gask's work, corresponded with Gask. Wells regarded The Vengeance of Larose (1939) as Gask's "best piece of story-telling...It kept me up till half-past one."

Bertrand Russell, also an admiring reader, called to see Gask at Gask's home in Walkerville, an Adelaide suburb, when he was in Adelaide in August 1950.

Gask's sister, Lilian Gask, was also a writer.

When nearly 80, Gask was still turning out two 80,000-words novels a year, and was reported to have got out of bed to write 23 pages and complete his final novel, Crime After Crime.