Rae Foley (1900–1978)

Rae Foley was the most prolific of the many pseudonyms of Elinor Denniston. She began her writing career in 1936 as "Dennis Allen" and wrote four crime novels under that name over a 10-year period. Her first book as "Rae Foley" was No Tears for the Dead (1948). As Rae Foley, she wrote fast-paced mysteries and romantic suspense novels, and created several amateur detectives, the most famous of whom was Hiram Potter, a mild-mannered young man from a wealthy New York City family introduced in Death and Mr. Potter (1955; also published as The Peacock Is a Bird of Prey, 1976). Hiram Potter also appeared in Back Door to Death (1963), Call It Accident (1965), Dangerous to Me (1959) and A Calculated Risk (1970). Denniston also worked for decades as the assistant to playwright and pioneering theatrical producer Theresa Helburn. This helps explain why the Rae Foley novels are filled with theater references and playful literary quotes from Shakespeare, while actresses and actors are often the main characters. In the late 1950s, Denniston helped Helburn complete her theatrical memoir A Wayward Quest. Later she was hired as assistant and Dictaphone transcriber to Eleanor Roosevelt while she was working on her memoirs in preparation for an autobiography. After writer Emilie Loring died in 1951, Denniston was hired as a ghostwriter to complete several unfinished Loring manuscripts.

Elinor Denniston used a number of pseudonyms, including Dennis Allen, Rae Foley, Elinore Dunniston, and Helen K. Maxwell. Beginning in the 1950s, Denniston also ghost-wrote under the name "Emilie Loring", at least some of which may have been based on notes or drafts by Loring (who wrote the first 30 or so of the novels published under her name).