Ethel White
Bio: Novelist and short story writer Ethel White was born in Great Britain. After authoring several unsuccessful novels, she began writing suspense and evidenced great talent for it. Her novel The Spiral Staircase was made into a film by director Robert Sidomark, but her best-known and most successful work is The Wheel Spins, which Alfred Hitchcock used as the basis of his classic early work, The Lady Vanishes. The Lady Vanishes was remade in the 1970's and starred Cybil Shepherd. Although it was widely panned, the remake testifies to the enduring interest in White's story. More recently, the Lady Vanishes has enjoyed a successful run on the stage.
Ethel White died after a short illness in 1945, but her reputation as an accomplished and skillful suspense writer continues to this day.
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Best known as the basis for Hitchcock's classic early film, The Lady Vanishes, Ethel White's The Wheel Spins is a gripping and accomplished work in its own right. The plot is deceptively simple, and the premise-a woman meets a mysterious stranger during a long railway journey-is classic. It's easy to see why Hitchcock found this novel so compelling and so well-suited to his particular brand of filmmaking. The protagonist of the story is a young woman named Iris Carr, who suffers a blackout just ... 
