She was very particular about that L, which stood for Leigh, a family name. This is a writer about whom there is no middle way. You either love her, as I do, or you hate and despise her, as does Julian Symons, a fairly average, but very prolific, detective story writer who wrote a definitive work on the detective story, Bloody Murder, published in 1972 and reissued twice, He can make out a good case. He says she is a snob, that her books are full of gross improbabilities (which is true), that her characters are caricatures, that she is…