Judson Philips, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award winner, was born in Northfield, Mass. in 1903. He began his writing career in the pulp fiction magazines in 1924, while earning his journalism degree from Columbia University.
In 1939 he won the $10,000 Dodd Mead Mystery Contest, using the pen name Hugh Pentecost, for Cancelled in Red. This marked a turning point in his career, as he created a second body of work for slick magazines and paperbacks as Pentecost.
He continued using both names simultaneously, living in New York and later Connecticut, producing more than 500 works. One of his best-known series was The Park Avenue Hunt Club, which appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly.
Philips owned a newspaper, and wrote columns for other newspapers. He owned an equity summer stock theater, "The Sharon Playhouse," where he wrote novels and produced plays. In the meantime, he wrote radio and film scripts for movies and television. He hosted a political and arts program in Connecticut's "Northwest Corner," broadcast out of Torrington.
Philips was married five times and had four children. He died of complications from emphysema in 1989, at age 85, in Canaan, Conn.
