Ethel Lina White belongs ineluctably to what has been called derisively "The Had-I-But-Known School" of mystery fiction, with its endangered heroine, its closed and threatening circle (which in her best novel is not an old dark house but a train), its association of terror with the commonplace, and its resolution in martial pairing. The opening of her best novel, The Wheel Spins (1936), suggests most of these elements: "The day before the disaster, Iris Carr had her first premonition of danger. She was used to the protection of a crowd.... Their constant presence tended to create the illusion that she moved in a large circle.... The crowd had swooped down on a beautiful village of picturesque squalor, tucked away in a remote corner of Europe.... On this holiday she heard Pan's pipes, but had no experience of the kick of his hairy hindquarters."

Little information on White's personal life...